Plans for 2023

Projects, School · 
10 mins read

A review of my achievements of 2022 and plans for the coming year.

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Many things happened in the world this year.

This time, though, I won’t discuss any international event here (you can already find everything on the web) and focus instead on my personal experiences.

I’ll write my review of this year, 2022, and set the goals for 2023, building this post upon the achievements list I made last year. Let’s quickly take that back!

2022 achievements list The list of achievements I had set for 2022.

This list was indicative, since in reality I didn’t take it too rigidly.-In general, I committed to simply doing useful things, but not necessarily what was on the list you see above. I’ve still achieved many of the goals I had planned for last year, though. As last year, I’ll start by explaining the “failures” first.

cancel What I haven’t done

Finish C/C++ website

Last school year (and the current one) we worked a lot with C++ and I learned many things for sure, but I didn’t find the time to put everything into my website. I probably underestimated how much there is to say about this programming language. Nonetheless, I improved and updated the existing sections and created some new ones. Not a big failure! There’s plenty of time next year.

Use Unity

Unfortunately, this year I never used Unity as I planned to. One of the main reasons is that it takes a lot of time, patience and skill to make a good game, and, not even understanding OOP or C# language properly, I thought to just dedicate my time to other, less ambitious projects. I’m aware that we learn by practicing and making mistakes, but it is really time consuming and maybe a bit too early for me. However, I already enrolled to an extracurricular course my school will do next where students, divided in groups, will make a video game in Unity, so it will be a perfect occasion to better understand how to work with the engine.

I actually learned a bit more on C# during the last period of the last school year by doing an extracurricular activity on Windows Forms (quite an old technology, I know, but the activity was very educational anyway, and I enjoyed the project we managed to make in the end).

Publish new videos

I was planning to make video adaptations of some of the posts you see in this blog, and for one of them I’ve already written the script. I also bought a microphone for recording, so I’m close to the objective. Next year, I hope to actually publish the videos I’m working on. I also want to make my own music for them, so I’ll need more time. I still have published things on my channel not related to the blog, though.

While I haven’t published more posts than last year (4 posts 🆚 the 5 of last year), I have updated the existing posts and have not beaten the goal by just one post, so I’m satisfied anyway. Also, 4-5 posts per year are not that few, especially considering the average length of my posts. I’d rather prefer less frequency but more quality than the opposite.

Android development

Last year, I used a lot Android Studio but didn’t really understand it well. Also, Java was new to me. This year I’ll study Java at school, so this might make me want to reopen it next year. There’s also Unity which is the priority, though, so I’m not sure… we’ll see!

Blender

I’ve never felt the need to open Blender because I’m not working on any 3D modeling or animation projects this year. It’s unfortunate, since this program is both really powerful and really useful, and I love using it when I do. I’m sure I’ll use it more in the future.

Manim

This summer I was very close to participating in the SoME2 event by 3Blue1Brown, but I didn’t know any interesting topics to talk about. I wanted to take advantage of that opportunity to learn Manim and use Python again, but eventually I didn’t. I still want to learn it though, so maybe next year I’ll take some time to do some clips with it.

check_circle_outline What I have done

Programming

Thanks to the school I attend and the various projects I work on, this year I’m happy to say that my programming skills have improved significantly! Of course, learning never ends and there’s a lot of stuff I still need to learn. For this reason, I won’t stop in the coming year 👨‍💻.

Write music

I haven’t published any new music this year, partly because I want an insurance of ownership of my work (like with SIAE, the Italian authority responsible for the protection, intermediation and management of copyright) and now I’m still underage so there are some legal hassles. There’s no rush, though.

Even without publishing music, I have made many new songs (especially piano melodies, but I’ve also written some lyrics) and I’m learning Ableton to really enter the music-making world. I might publish my first album next year. I’m excited!

School

This year I decided to be a bit more extraordinary than usual: I decided with some of my classmates to run for student representative. The experience has been unique: it was like creating a political party and then campaign for it, making your ideas and proposals known to all the students in the school. My roll was composed of four people, but unfortunately only one of them was elected student representative and it wasn’t me. Still, my party has won and now represents the students of my school with the other three representatives.

All this to say that my vision of school has improved from last year, even if I hate the many problems my school has. I’m hoping to solve some of them next year (this school year) with the help of my party’s elected student :).

Apart from that, my grades are good, and I’m enjoying the subjects we’re studying more than before. That’s good news (though I still struggle with humanistic subjects; depending on the time, it’s a love-hate relationship).

In May we also did our first school trip of superiori (high school), since in the previous two years the pandemic had prevented it from happening. We went to Rome for three days, and I had a great time staying there with my classmates and teachers while visiting the capital of our state 🇮🇹.

Animation & video editing

By doing some videos for school projects (but some also for my hobbies) like this one I’ve learned many useful tricks about video editing and animation, but again, there’s a lot more to learn and I plan to improve these skills, too.

Family & friends

The pandemic was a disaster for social relationships, but since then the relationship with my friends has improved very much. Also, everything is ok in my family as well.

Health

If you read my list from last year, I had written “probably no gym”, but surprisingly, I instead decided to finally join it. I worked out for about 6 months (excluding vacations), combining it with a more balanced diet, and it has been a great experience. My weight increased by nearly two kilograms, and I tracked all of my workouts using the fantastic app Jefit (which I highly recommend to anyone who goes to the gym).

add_circle Not in the list

Some other things I have achieved/done this year:

This year I also started expanding my range of music preferences and genres, adding to Einaudi many famous artists such as OneRepublic, Imagine Dragons, Coldplay, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Avicii, Alan Walker, Billie Eilish, Charlie Puth, Maroon 5 but also less popular ones.

I fell in love with the music of OneRepublic and they are now my favorite artists together with Ludovico Einaudi 💖.

I used Spotify much more frequently that previous years and I’ve received my first Spotify Wrapped.

My Spotify Wrapped of 2022 My Spotify Wrapped of 2022 (in Italian).

Overall, I would say that this year was more of a consolidation of what I’ve achieved so far than a year full of novelties.

Plans for 2023

Here’s my achievements list for 2023 (some old goals are still present for the next year):

Next year I’ll turn 18 and it will be an important moment of my life. As I wrote in the list, I’ll become a little more independent and I’ll probably look for a job in the summer of find another way to earn some money.

I hope to enjoy 2023 as much as 2022 (if not more), and in the meantime, I wish you all a happy new year! 🎉🎇


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