We’re now halfway through 2020. It feels pretty surreal re-reading the previous monthly updates that I’ve wrote. These six months passed by fast and I don’t think I even had a chance to catch my breath. I never appreciated the cadence of being a student so much, from intense studying during the school term to pure relaxation during the holidays. Can’t experience that for the next two years unfortunately, since I’ll be in National Service.
A lot has happened this month. Singapore entered Phase 2 of the circuit breaker measures, which meant that we could finally go out and meet our friends. I turned 20. Our Prime Minister called for a General Election, which means a lot more politics started showing up on my radar. Although I wish otherwise, I’d say this month was much more reactive than proactive. I mostly responded to the aforementioned events instead of proactively planning for what to do during or after their occurrences.
In June, I'll try my best to write at least two essays every week on any topic. I'll publish them in a revamped blog...
Nope. I did write a lot more in the first one or two weeks, but ever since I could go out again, I have been spending a lot more time out of my house meeting friends and doing activities. I lost the introspective mood I had entered during the time in lockdown and that made it a lot more difficult to do reflective writing. I didn’t have the time to do more research or technical writing either, so this goal ended up falling flat.
Leading up to my birthday, I had also tried to publish more reflections and do some goal setting, but I ended up not doing much either :(
So what exactly have I been up to? That’s a question that I‘m asking myself too honestly, but I’ll try my best to recall.
Shipped Import to Taskade and Quick Search, which was a project that was completed surprisingly quickly! It’s already in production and I’ve started work on a new project to add hyperlinking ability to the editor. That one isn’t going too well so far, so I’m pushing hard on it.
Wrote a reflection on my journey as a student so far. It‘s a pretty long one, but it was a good meditation on how I’ve changed over the years, discovering my learning style and also picking up programming despite not even knowing how to type properly when I was 13.
Read Seveneves and wrote a review on it. It highlighted my optimism towards the future of science, and why I enjoy reading science fiction.
That’s about it for this month really. Other than that, for the past two weeks I’ve adopted a system of one-word themes for each week (e.g. optimism, reconnecting) that would set the tone for the rest of the week. I felt that could be a good way to feel refreshed every week, trying to embrace and understand a new theme each week.
I received my letter of enlistment for National Service a few days ago. I’m slated to be conscripted on 28 September, and to spend the next 22 months serving my nation. My friend (who is also enlisting on the same date) and I talked about an “army bucket list”, a list of goals to reach before going in.
Ship a product. It can be anything. But I just want to ship something before I enter a phase in life where I realistically can’t ship anything of value.
Be able to climb V3s comfortably. Right now I still have trouble climbing V2s, so hopefully I’m able to get past this plateau soon!
Write more. Sounds cliched and not SMART at all. But I do just want to do more writing and self-exploration before I enlist.
That’s about it for this month! Three items for three months, let’s see how well this goes.
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