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+[[!meta title="Plans for 2019"]]
+[[!meta author="Daniel Silverstone"]]
+[[!meta date="2019-01-16 11:30"]]
+[[!tag draft]]
+
+At the end of last year I made eight statements about what I wanted to do
+throughout 2019.  I tried to split them semi-evenly between being a better
+adult human and being a better software community contributor.  I have had
+a few weeks now to settle my thoughts around what they mean and I'd like to
+take some time to go through the eight and discuss them a little more.
+
+I've been told that doing this reduces the chance of me sticking to the
+points because simply announcing the points and receiving any kind of positive
+feedback may stunt my desire to actually achieve the goals.  I'm not sure
+about that though, and I really want my wider friends community to help keep
+me honest about them all.  I've set a reminder for April 7th to review the
+situation and hopefully be able to report back positively on my progress.
+
+---
+
+My list of goals was stated in a [pair of][tweet1] [tweets][tweet2]:
+
+1. Continue to lose weight and get fit. I'd like to reach 80kg during the year if I can
+2. Begin a couch to 5k and give it my very best
+3. Focus my software work on finishing projects I have already started
+4. Where I join in other projects be a net benefit
+5. Give back to the @rustlang community because I've gained so much from them already
+6. Be better at tidying up
+7. Save up lots of money for renovations
+8. Go on a proper holiday
+
+[tweet1]: https://twitter.com/dsilverstone/status/1079779289552375808
+[tweet2]: https://twitter.com/dsilverstone/status/1079779592964136962
+
+---
+
+Weight and fitness
+==================
+
+Some of you may be aware already, others may not, that I have been making an
+effort to shed some of my excess weight over the past six or seven months.  I
+"started" in May of 2018 weighing approximately 141kg and I am, as of this
+morning, weighing approximately 101kg.  Essentially that's a semi-steady rate
+of 5kg per month, though it has, obviously, been slowing down of late.
+
+In theory, given my height of roughly 178cm I should aim for a weight of around
+70kg.  I am trying to improve my fitness and to build some muscle and as such
+I'm aiming long-term for roughly 75kg.  My goal for this year is to continue my
+improvement and to reach and maintain 80kg or better.  I think this will make a
+significant difference to my health and my general wellbeing.  I'm already
+sleeping better on average, and I feel like I have more energy over all.  I
+bought a [Garmin Vivoactive 3][watch] and have been using that to track my
+general health and activity.  My resting heart rate has gone down a few BPM
+over the past six months, and I can see my general improvement in sleep etc
+over that time too.  I bought a [Garmin Index Scale][scale] to track my weight
+and body composition, and that is also showing me good values as well as
+encouraging me to weigh myself every day and to learn how to interpret the
+results.
+
+[watch]: https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/p/571520
+[scale]: https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/p/530464
+
+I've been managing my weight loss partly by means of a
+[16:8 intermittent fasting][ifast] protocol, combined with a steady calorie
+deficit of around 1000kcal/day.  While this sounds pretty drastic, I was
+horrendously overweight and this was critical to getting my weight to shift
+quickly.  I expect I'll reduce that deficit over the course of the year, hence
+I'm only aiming for a 20kg drop over a year rather than trying to maintain what
+could in theory be a drop of 30kg or more.
+
+[ifast]: https://www.menshealth.com/uk/nutrition/a749933/mh-trials-hugh-jackmans-16-8-diet/
+
+In addition to the IF/deficit, I have been more active.  I bought an
+[e-bike][whirr] and slowly got going on that over the summer, along with
+learning to enjoy walks around my local parks and scrubland.  Since the weather
+got bad enough that I didn't want to be out of doors I [joined a gym][jetts]
+where I have been going regularly since September.  Since the end of October I
+have been doing a very basic strength training routine and my shoulders do seem
+to be improving for it.  I can still barely do a pushup but it's less
+embarassingly awful than it was.
+
+[whirr]: https://www.e-bikesdirect.co.uk/brands/wisper/wisper-806-se-folding
+[jetts]: https://www.jetts.co.uk/clubs/stockport
+
+Given my efforts toward my fitness, my intention this year is to extend that to
+include a [Couch to 5k][c25k] type effort.  Amusingly, Garmin offer a self
+adjusting "coach" called [Garmin Coach][gcoach] which I will likely use to
+guide me through the process.  While I'm not committing to any, maybe I'll get
+involved in some [parkruns][parkrun] this year too.  I'm not committing to
+reach an ability to *run* 5k because, quite simply, my bad leg may not let me,
+but I am committing to give it my best.  My promise to myself was to start some
+level of jogging once I hit 100kg, so that's looking likely by the end of this
+month.  Maybe February is when I'll start the c25k stuff in earnest.
+
+[c25k]: http://www.c25k.com/
+[gcoach]: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/fitness/garmin-coach/
+[parkrun]: http://www.parkrun.org.uk/southmanchester/
+
+Adulting
+========
+
+This section will be shorter than the previous one because it's somewhat less
+personal and I don't really have to report on progress yet…
+
+I have put three items down in this category to get better at this year.  One
+is a big thing for our house.  I am, quite simply put, awful at tidying up.  I
+leave all sorts of things lying around and I am messy and lazy.  I need to fix
+this.  My short-term goal in this respect is to pick one room of the house
+where the mess is mostly mine, and learn to keep it tidy before my checkpoint
+in April.  I think I'm likely to choose the Study because it's where others
+of my activities for this year will centre and it's definitely almost entirely
+my mess in there.  I'm not yet certain *how* I'll learn to do this, but it has
+been a long time coming and I really do need to.  It's not fair to my husband
+for me to be this awful all the time.
+
+The second of these points is to explicitly save money for renovations.  Last
+year we had a new bathroom installed and I've been seriously happy about that.
+We will need to pay that off this year (we have the money, we're just waiting
+as long as we can to earn the best interest on it first) and then I'll want to
+be saving up for another spot of renovations.  I'd like to have the kitchen and
+dining room done - new floor, new units and sink in the kitchen, fix up the
+messy wall in the dining room, have them decorated, etc.  I imagine this will
+take quite a bit of 2019 to save for, but hopefully this time next year I'll
+be saying that we managed that and it's time for the next part of the house.
+
+Finally I want to take a proper holiday this year.  It has been a couple of
+years since Rob and I went to Seoul for a month, and while that was excellent,
+it was partly "work from home" and so I'd like to take a holiday which isn't
+also a conference, or working from home, or anything other than relaxation and
+seeing of interesting things.  This will also require saving for, so I imagine
+we won't get to do it until mid to late 2019, but I feel like this is part of
+a general effort I've been making to take care of myself more.  The fitness
+stuff above being physical, but a proper holiday being part of taking better
+care of my mental health.
+
+Software, Hardware, and all the squishy humans in between
+=========================================================
+
+2018 was not a great year for me in terms of getting projects done.  I have
+failed to do almost anything with [Gitano][] and I did not doing well with
+[Debian][] or other projects I am part of.  As such, I'm committing to do
+better by my projects in 2019.
+
+[Gitano]: https://www.gitano.org.uk/
+[Debian]: https://www.debian.org/
+
+First, and foremost, I'm pledging to focus my efforts on **finishing** projects
+which I've already started.  I am very good at thinking "Oh, that sounds fun"
+and starting something new, leaving old projects by the wayside and not getting
+them to any state of completion.  While software is never entirely "done", I do
+feel like I should get in-progress projects to a point that others can use them
+and maybe contribute too.
+
+As such, I'll be making an effort to sort out issues which others have raised
+in Gitano (though I doubt I'll do much more feature development for it) so that
+it can be used by NetSurf and so that it doesn't drop out of Debian.  Since
+the next release of Debian is due soon, I will have to pull my finger out and
+get this done pretty soon.
+
+I have been working, on and off, with Rob on a new point-of-sale for our local
+pub [Ye Olde Vic][vic] and I am committing to get it done to a point that we
+can experiment with using it in the pub by the summer.  Also I was working on a
+way to measure fluid flow through a pipe so that we can correlate the pulled
+beer with the sales and determine wastage etc.  I expect I'll get back to the
+"beer'o'meter" once the point-of-sale work is in place and usable.  I am not
+going to commit to getting it done this year, but I'd like to make a dent in
+the remaining work for it.
+
+[vic]: https://www.yeoldevic.pub/en/
+
+I have an on-again off-again relationship with some code I wrote quite a while
+ago when learning [Rust][rustlang].  I am speaking of my [Yarn][yarn]
+implementation called (imaginatively) [rsyarn][].  I'd like to have that
+project reworked into something which can be used with [Cargo][cargo] and
+associated tooling nicely so that running `cargo test` in a Rust project can
+result in running yarns as well.
+
+[rustlang]: https://www.rust-lang.org/
+[yarn]: http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/cmdtest/tree/README.yarn
+[rsyarn]: https://git.gitano.org.uk/rsyarn.git/tree
+[cargo]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/index.html
+
+There may be other projects which jump into this category over the year, but
+those listed above are the ones I'm committing to make a difference to my
+previous lackadaisical approach.
+
+On a more community-minded note, one of my goals is to ensure that I'm always a
+net benefit to any project I join or work on in 2019.  I am very aware that in
+a lot of cases, I provide short drive-by contributions to projects which can
+end up costing that project more than I gave them in benefit.  I want to stop
+that behaviour and instead invest more effort into fewer projects so that I
+always end up a net benefit to the project in question.  This may mean spending
+longer to ensure that an issue I file has enough in it that I may not need to
+interact with it again until verification of a correct fix is required.  It may
+mean spending time fixing someone elses' issues so that there is the
+engineering bandwidth for someone else to fix mine.  I can't say for sure how
+this will manifest, beyond being up-front and requesting of any community I
+decide to take part in, that they tell me if I end up costing more than I'm
+bringing in benefit.
+
+Rust and the Rust community
+===========================
+
+I've mentioned Rust above, and this is perhaps the most overlappy of my
+promises for 2019.  I want to give back to the Rust community because over the
+past few years as I've learned Rust and learned more and more about the
+community, I've seen how much of a positive effect they've had on my life.  Not
+just because they made learning a new programming langauge so enjoyable, but
+because of the community's focus on programmers as human beings.  The fantastic
+documentation ethics, and the wonderfully inclusive atmosphere in the community
+meant that I managed to get going with Rust so much more effectively than with
+almost any other language I've ever tried to learn since [Lua][lua].
+
+[lua]: http://www.lua.org/
+
+I have, since Christmas, been slowly involving myself in the Rust community
+more and more.  I joined one of the various Discord servers and have been
+learning about how [crates.io][cratesio] is managed and I have been
+contributing to [rustup.rs][rustup] which is the initial software interface
+most Rust users encounter and forms such an integral part of the experience of
+the ecosystem that I feel it's somewhere I can make a useful impact.
+
+[cratesio]: https://crates.io/
+[rustup]: https://rustup.rs/
+
+While I can't say a significant amount more right now, I hope I'll be able to
+blog more in the future on what I'm up to in the Rust community and how I hope
+that will benefit others already in, and interested in joining, the fun that is
+programming in Rust.
+
+---
+
+In summary, I hope at least some of you will help to keep me honest about my
+intentions for 2019, and if, in return, I can help you too, please feel free
+to let me know.