First of all this year has been nuts. It has been one of the craziest years in my 42 years. It started out normal and I was just moving along with work and personal projects. Late last year I got a YMCA gym membership and was going regularly. We were planning our vacation. Our lives were on our normal path. That seems like a year ago.

Then Covid-19 showed up and turned our lives upside down. Gym is closed for now. I had to move my office to my house to work at home for nearly three months. A couple weeks ago I moved my office back to my office. My partner is also working from home and hasn't done much cause all his locations are shut down for now. My work hasn't changed much other than instead of working in an office we were working remotely on short notice. It was a little chaotic at first but soon we settled in.

For the most part we've been stuck at home. I'm a person who like to go on road trips, visit places, and go to events. All that was out of the question with the state stay-at-home orders. The most we did was go to the park and weekly trips to get groceries and other food. We didn't see any family until Memorial Day. Slowly things are re-opening and we have been able to go to state parks and now we can eat at some restaurants. We also have been allowed to return to the office. We have to wear masks and try to keep distace from others. It's called "social distancing". At this point it seems normal but it's not. We're probably not going to be many events for the rest of the year. I think we'll still go on vacation but make it a more "nature" vacation. As for occupying ourselves on weekends, we're probably going to do mostly hikes at parks and maybe some bike riding.

Just as the stay-at-home orders were being lifted, a black man named George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. This is another example of police brutality that has been targeted at black Americans for a very long time. I'm not saying others haven't been targeted but black Americans seem to be targeted more. Police seem more militarized and abusive. Every day it seems like someone is killed. In Kentucky the police did a no-knock raid on the wrong home and killed someone. A former police officer and son in Georgia chased a black man running and gunned him down cause they thought he was stealing from a construction site. Those are just incidents I can think of off the top of my head. This has caused nationwide outrage that has resulted in protest and civil unrest in many cities. We've even had protests here in Springfield, IL and in my small hometown, Collinsville. On top of it, our President pours gasoline on the flames. He does nothing to try to quell or fix the issue other than to to "dominate", blame, threaten U.S. citizens with sending in the militarty to kill protesters. It has been distressing to see lives needlessly lost and see cities being looted and burned. Our leaders are failing us too. This makes me scared and stressed. I'm frightened for our country and our citizens that are being abused by our government and those that are supposed to serve and protect us.

All this makes what I write below seem insignificant. I'm going to be kind to myself in that I feel like I'm working under duress. I have many days I feel depressed, filled with anxiety. I'm also angry. I have accepted that there are just days I don't want to do much. At the same time I'm privilaged and blessed to have a well paying job when so many have lost theirs. I'm also privilaged in that I don't have to worry about being a target of racists.

Initial Goals and How I'm Doing

  1. I want to use more animation. I haven't done much with this but I have removed Animate.css from my website and replaced with my own css animations. So there's that. I'm not satified with my progress here.

  2. I want to continue focusing on JavaScript. Specifically ES6. I've done good with this. I've updated all the jQuery used on my website to ES6. I have also added more components such as accordions, tabs, responsive tables, and updated my mobile menu. All use ES6. I have started some projects such as STL Photos, Workout Generator, Books I Read - sites/apps that are JavaScript heavy. I'm happy with my progress here.

  3. In VS Code I want to use more shortcuts and code snippets to speed up productivity. I do use the search functions more but I'm very steeped in habit and I haven't got out of the habit of relying on the mouse.

  4. I didn't do so well with this one last year but create something using a programming language I don't know. I'm not venturing out of the JavaScript ecosystem too much. I have started some tutorial learning of Svelte.js. I have also used Node.js, Express to create local server environments and connect to MongoDB. I'm okay with this.

  5. Give my blog a new name and a "real" domain name. Haven't even started on this. I may not bother with it.

Other Things Done

The biggest thing I have done so far was get my personal website redesigned and freshened up.

I have started on a photo site for all the photos I took in St. Louis between 2014 and 2018. I've figured out lazy loading and have been doing a bit of photo editing and resizing.

I have started participating in some Discord web development servers. I have been able to help some new developers solve some CSS issues. I started this when working from home just to "talk" to others.

This is not development related but I have been drawing more and making small painting with gouache.

Assessment

I'm going to be kind to myself. I haven't progressed in some areas as much as I hoped and I don't know if I will so much this year. I have done what I can and will do what I can. The important thing is that I'm still moving forward. That's going to be my mindset for the rest of the year.