2025 Quarter Two Goals
This is the outline for my quarterly quests in Q2 of 2025
Previous Quarter Review
Fitness Goal
I think that I did well here. I wish that I would’ve started Strength Side one fucking week earlier so that I would’ve finished the program with the quarter. But that’s fine. I’m going to continue doing this program for the next quarter anyway. So this time, I actually will end with the quarter. But as far as progress, I’ve made quite a bit. I’m pretty excited for how my push ups are looking and my pull ups are coming along too
Artistic Goal
This was a fail. Straight up and down. There’s no way around it. Insofar as I did not even approach my goal of “actively and intentionally capturing images in my day to day”. I did, however, learn a lot about my process through the other goals that I made for myself. So I think I have a good plan for this coming quarter. I need to play into the things that I’m inherentlt driven to do. So if I can make a self-hosting project out of photography and build hardware around it (like a dedicated work station for photo editing), I’m going to be more successful. I think this is going to be a good way to combine both of these efforts.
Creative Goal
I crushed this shit. I’m so fucking passionate about this part. Learning to self host and use server environments more efficiently to the point that I can actually build tools that I can use in personal projects is awesome. I have a K8S homelab setup that I built following MVDB’s Skool course. I’m in the process of going through another, in-depth Docker/Kubernetes course. And then, once I have a better handle on K8S itself, I’m gonna go through another course (or maybe courses? IDR) for K8S and FluxCD. So I can get more hands on experience with working with K8S with YAML manifests. But I think working more hands on first is going to be beneficial. Learn the tool before you automate the boring stuff. Oh yea: My self-hosted LinkDing instance
This Quarter
Scope
Week 14 to Week 26 of 2025. So from [[2025-03-30]] - [[2025-06-28]].
Areas of Focus
Body:: Do Strength Side again Right Brain:: Setup a workstation for photo editing and document the rest of this pregnancy Left Brain:: Be better at Docker and Kubernetes
Body
Last quarter, Strength Side went so well that I am going to continue down this calisthenics path this quarter as well. I may start trying to lift again in Q3 but we’ll see what happens. That’s a conversation with myself that will need to be had later. Similar goal though, try to go through the whole Strength Side 3 months and do the harder variations of each exercise. I feel way better and I definitely feel like I’m moving around better.
DoD
I will consider this goal complete if I do at least 3 workouts a week for this quarter and document my findings.
Right Brain
Last quarter I fell flat on my face with this goal. But in trying to pursue it, I learned a lot about myself and my process. I am fully into self-hosting and trying to make my own services on my home network. I need to incorporate that into my Art goal. Not let it steal the show or anything. But play into my current interests. I broke down and spent money in a way that I was trying to avoid doing. But, tbh, I think it’s gonna be good for me as it applies to this goal. I bought myself a Ricoh GR III Street Edition. I do not need a new camera but I really do think this is gonna help me take more photos. Because of the size of this camera as well as the settings available in such a small package, I think I’m gonna be able to have this camera with me in more scenarios than my Nikon Z5. And that’s definitely a lesson I’ve learned about myself over time. I need to have tools available to use them. I am inherently lazy and I will actively not do something if there are too many barriers to entry. So while this is a superfluous purchase, I think it’s gonna end up being really worthwhile.
DoD
This goal will be complete if I am taking photos more regularly and publishing them to a self-hosted blog or something similar. I don’t want to constrain myself too much here as my next goal will inform what my publishing platform will be
Left Brain
So I feel like I was REALLY taken by Chris Ferdinandi’s post about digital gardening. This shit speaks to me like viscerally. This is what excites me about the web. This is what made me want to be a designer and illustrator as a kid, it’s what gave me any interest in “building web sites” and later programming. In a lot of ways, this sort of early web mentality of like the DIY or punk web or whatever you want to call it, shaped me as a person. And I want so badly to get back to that. Just build shit because it makes me happy and it gives me a creative way to interact with the people around me. And it gives me a reason to learn different technologies and processes. So I want to continue on this journey that I’m on to learn and use Docker and Kubernetes more so that I can build whatever I want and deliver it to the people that I care about.
Definition of Done
I have done more learning on Docker and K8S, I have a more robust homelab/home network, and I am self-hosting more services for my own consumption, thereby reducing the number of services I use from large toxic tech companies, but also serving my own digital spaces for my own creative work.
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