2024 Halftime Report

To be honest I don't know how to best describe what this year has been so far. What I am sure of is there are a handful of things I am grateful for. So I guess I'll start there.

💒 Church Wedding

My wife and I already did a civil wedding 5 years ago but we really felt like we needed to do a church wedding. The details of our story deserves its own page, so for now I'll just say I'm glad we decided to do it. A union that started off with a lot rebellion, hurt, and brokenness is now fully redeemed. Relationships with family, church, and friends have been healed and strengthened. We can finally say a new and better chapter of our lives begins!

🏡 House Improvements

We moved into this new home over a year ago. But only recently were we able to buy the furniture and appliances we wanted. There are more improvements we want to do but I am super grateful with what we have now and it has already elevated our living conditions.

🛫 Australia Trip

We are going to Australia this November! Woohoo! This will be our first international travel as a family. We already booked our airfare and accommodation and visas are being processed. We are hitting 2 goals with this travel, first is for me to join a Laravel Conference (a.k.a. Laracon) and second is family vacation!

💻 Officially a Laravel Contributor

Obviously I am a Laravel enthusiast and I've been using the framework for work and for my personal projects. On Twitter/X I follow the top minds in the community, watching them build what they build is inspiring to me and makes me want build cool products/tools too. After a few years of just spectating I finally got myself to a point where I could contribute. These are small changes but it's a start and I'm excited to learn more and build more.

• PRs on laravel/framework
• PRs on laravel/laravel

It's not all sunshine and rainbows though, there are some areas of my life that's been difficult. Even as I am writing this I am wrestling whether I should add my personal project to the list above or not.

A little back story, before the year started I told my wife that I want to build a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product of my own and I want to spend my 2024 chasing that goal. It's not that I have a business idea that I'm 100% sure will take off, it's just that I want it for myself. I want to see myself build something from the ground up. I want to see what I can build with the skill set that God has allowed me to acquire if I give it my all. If what I build fails, it's fine. I am sure that the journey itself will be of value to me. I told her that I don't want to be on my deathbed not having a memory of a season where I really tried hard and gave it my all.

So here I am now in the middle of the year, and yes I made progress with my project but it's not as far as I thought it would have been already by now. What I've learnt so far is that it is hard to complete the to do list if the to be list is not completed first. A to be list is character development. It's hard to do what Stephen Curry does if you don't even have the discipline to exercise. It's hard to do what Taylor Otwell does if you don't even have the focus to work on difficult or mundane tasks.

Yes the progress I made seems small, but this journey is exposing a lot of bad habits in me. I am realizing that this is part of the project. I feel like I haven't made the progress I want because my to do list is still long, but at least my to be list is shrinking. Some on the list that's ticked off are proper sleep, habit of writing, shutting off social media, stop comparing and walk your own journey, etc. There are a lot more to work on like deep focus, eating healthy and habit of reading, I will eventually knock them off too.

So yeah, the first half of the year was also tough. It's hard to die to yourself to become a better person, but it must be done!

Conclusion

I love the year so far, good things have happen and I am feeling some growing pains. What needs to happen is happening, a dying to oneself to become a better person. The fight is not over! It's only halftime, the project can still be completed! And a note to myself: Enjoy the journey!