New Year's Resolutions for 2024

I have been reflecting on life for several months, perhaps I am going through my particular midlife crisis.

This year 2024 I want to do my part to correct what is in my power (and worry less about what is not in my power), hence this list of New Year's resolutions.

Posting my resolutions has a dual purpose:

1. That people understand my priorities and the reasons that motivate them.
2. Maintain my focus throughout the year thanks to social pressure.

Focus on my children

At the time of writing this article my children are 5 years and 17 months old, and I love them more than anything, they make me happy every day.

This last year has been difficult, combining my last job with the birth of my second child, my mental health suffered as I struggled to maintain my usual productivity.

In this year 2024, my focus will be first on my children, and I will try not to feel guilty about what I do not have enough time to do.

Friendships

I have been losing touch with various friends, I think mainly for two reasons:

• The distance, first when I lived in San Francisco, and now in Lisbon. I tried to keep in touch with several friends, but they did not reciprocate.

• I feel that some friends have left me aside because of my ideologies. I can't be sure but it saddens me to think this is the case.

I will try to focus my efforts on worthwhile friendships, who show me respect and that they care about me as much as I do about them. No hard feelings, life changes and is complicated for everyone.

Consulting

This year I will organize my consulting service and make it a source of income. My goal is to help companies and projects with my 16 years of experience in web development.

In the upcoming weeks I will set up a website and look for my first clients.

Experiment with AI

I am very interested in new advances in Artificial Intelligence, I will try to dedicate time to learning and experimenting.

• Generation of images and videos. I have several personal projects in mind, but I also want to sit down with my daughter and have her learn to generate images and interact with AIs. I think it will be something important for her future.
• LLMs (Large Language Models) for different topics: programming, chat, embeddings.
• Voice generation. I want to clone my voice and that of my family with local models.
• Translations. A first objective is to automate the translation of my blog articles, with manual review.

Cryptocurrencies

I have been passionate about cryptocurrencies for many years, but I have never gotten involved as a developer, something I regret.

This year I want to start collaborating as a programmer in some projects, especially those that focus on cryptocurrencies as means of payment.

I will also take steps to use cryptocurrencies on a daily basis, inspired by Joel Valenzuela.

Reduce ideological efforts

Those who have known me for a long time are aware that my ideology has changed radically in the last 10 years. I suspect that many see it as a betrayal of my principles, or having become someone else. In my view it is a natural evolution as a result of educating myself and reflecting on topics to which I had not been exposed before.

What I wasn't anticipating is the mental and emotional effort of opposing the hegemonic zeitgeist. This is something that has taken a toll on my happiness and mental health. It would be easy to bow to the majority and return to the fold, to avoid arguments and fights, but I think I would feel bad about myself for intellectual dishonesty.

My resolution is on the one hand to worry less about my purity, but on the other to be firm when it comes time to debate. One thing is the ideas you have and another is that you do not want or can dedicate greater efforts to supporting them in opposition to almost the entire society.

I will focus on educating my children in the values that I want to see in the world.

Social networks and messaging

I have been greatly reducing my social media exposure for years already, deleting applications from my mobile phone for example, but this year I want to go one step further so I can really focus:

• I will check messages and social networks only twice a day: in the morning with coffee and at night when my children go to bed.
• I will delete absolutely all notifications. If someone needs me urgently they will call me, otherwise it can wait.
• I will dedicate social networks only to the topics that interest me (free software, cryptocurrencies, AI), and I will reduce ideological topics.

More blog

I want to write more on my blog, about the topics that interest me, and also some personal posts like this one. I need to leave perfectionism aside and write faster, without thinking so much.

To start off on the right foot, I wrote this entry in 2 clock hours.

I'm starting to think about what my legacy will be (yes, I'm definitely in a mid-life crisis), and my blog can become a window to my life and interests for my children.