This year is special to me. Every other year has been predictable: I’d start January with a pretty good idea of what December would bring. But not this year. School, university, and work—the trifecta of good behaviour—seem like distant pipe dreams.
So, in a futile attempt to gain back control, I want to guess at what the next twelve months will bring.
Reading
I had a friend. We don’t really speak anymore, but he left me with some curious reading recommendations.
- Latter-Day Pamphlets by Thomas Carlyle.
- Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
- The poetry of Robert Burns.
- The political works of Peter Kropotkin.
I don’t know much about Carlyle, only that he was a mathematician—at least we have that in common. Emerson I’m really excited about: a few of my favourite writers often quote him, and he has admirers like Whitman and Thoreau.1
Robert Burns is the second Scot to appear in the list. The only poem of his that I’ve read, To a Mouse, is quite similar to the kind of poetry I write: regular structure with rhymes that come and go, almost accidentally. Maybe I can learn a thing or two from this master.
From what I can tell, Kropotkin was an anarchist. I think I’ll need to understand Marx before I can understand Kropotkin. Then again, I know people who would tell me that I need to understand Marx before I can understand anything.
As you can see, it’s a lot more political philosophy and less of my usual fiction. Right now, I’m reading some of Socrates’ dialogues: I want to have a good understanding of Plato before I study more contemporary philosophers too deeply.
I miss my friend. He used to read me long passages from the above mentioned works over late-night calls. I was hoping that by reading some of these works I can understand him better.
Writing
Right now I can’t write anything other than essays in the form of blog posts and corny poems. Not sure when that will change.
The problem with my poetry is that it is too raw; sometimes I wish my poems didn’t rhyme, but I can’t help it. In any case, I write poems in a sort of trance: I will suddenly feel the urge to write (like a pain in my chest, near the heart) and then, before I know it, I’m done. I can barely edit them in the following days, I’m too scared. Short stories are easier, more deliberate. But poems? There is nowhere to hide with poems.
I want to write more book reviews: I really enjoyed writing that piece on Bukowski. Since then I’ve read three books:
- Create Dangerously by Albert Camus.
- Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell.
- Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
I’ve got a lot to say about these three, so stay tuned. One day I want to revisit my favourite books and write reviews about them too. Reading lots of different books is cool and all, but I see value in rereading too. We forget so much after all.
I will procrastinate by transcribing some of my old work to my website. Just need to clean it up a bit first.
Software
I’m building a general-purpose macro processor in C, mainly because I haven’t found one that suits my needs. I’m hoping it is general enough to work as an static site generator (that I can use for this website) and as a tool for literate programming. It’s not quite ready to see the light of day, it will soon enough.
I’m also developing a lightweight markup language similar to Markdown (reasons will have to wait for a future blog post). I really want to build the canonical implementation using literate programming though, so it will have to wait until the macro processor is ready.
On the personal side, I want to revisit the wonderful introduction to cryptography in GNU/Linux since my current backups are insufficient, to say the least. I will definitely be writing a blog post about that. Also, I’m about halfway through the famed book SICP, so I’ll finish it sometime soon (Scheme is so much fun!). Afterwards, I will probably continue through this reading list.
A lot of my website is under construction as of yet. I’m sure I’ll keep improving it. Particularly, I want to implement more IndieWeb features like microformats.
Hobbies
Chess
I want to take chess more seriously this year. I was reading the Soviet Chess Primer by Ilya Maizelis a few months ago, but I forgot about it. I don’t have enough money for a coach, so the book will have to do for now.
It would also help to play longer matches, perhaps set some time aside during the week for a classical game. I want to get better at blindfold chess too (I can do it, just takes me a long time to make moves), so I will have to test out Lichess’ features for it. At some point I wanted to make a CLI to interface directly with Lichess’ API and play blindfold games from the terminal; these days I’m too pressed for time, so I’ll only do that if I have to.
Running
I never did run a marathon: I got too content with a half-marathon a couple of years ago. Maybe this year it will be different.
Meditation and Yoga
I’ve been meditating for years, and doing some yoga too. This year, I would be seriously dissapointed with myself if I didn’t follow through and finish the MBSR course. I’ve been trying to stick to it for ages, but it’s not going to get away from me this time, I feel it.
Money
All of this is a distraction, of course. The real question is: how am I going to survive? I have no source of income whatsoever, and very few things are appealing. Becoming a writer is, sadly, always off the table unless I can sell more than a few words. Doing a math PhD is very attractive, though I’m not sure I can get an offer I like. There is another project I have that I’m keeping under wraps for now; if I can pull it off then maybe I’ll be okay in the medium-term.
Isn’t the prospect of starving in 2026 incredibly exciting?
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Incidentally, Thoreau was also a Carlyle fan, so I guess I’ll have to read him too. I’ve only come accross very little of Whitman, but that has been enough for me to like him a lot; I wouldn’t mind reading him too.↩︎