log 81: recap

2023

What a year it has been. Three hundred and sixty-five days full of uncertainty and life. This is everything I have done this year. It was my first year out of college so I wanted to start off strong. Everything I accomplished this year aims to build a stable foundation for this coming year.

January

I started the year learning how to program in Swift from an online course, beginning my side career as a programmer. During this time, I also applied and was accepted to Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute of Paris for the October intake.

February

I began working on my fitness app, Kynetik (as of now), building a foundation for all the information and functions I would put in later. I worked on things like layout and exercise. With my limited programming knowledge, it was an ongoing learning experience. In the meantime, I was also studying for the CSCS, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, certificate. One of the highest-level certificates attainable by a strength and conditioning professional.

March

I continued to work on my app and study for the CSCS. During this month I developed the first working iteration of my app. Although it was very barebones, it was able to generate over 1 billion possible programs. I was happy with how my program generation was coming along but needed to add ways to make it more specific to the client.

April

I began the development of my exercise database, which contained around 200 exercises. I sorted, categorized, and prioritized all the exercises to be readable by my code. I took a short trip to Paris, London, and Brussels, which was my first time out of the USA in a couple of years. It was so nice to be immersed in a different culture. My favorite part was the number of languages that I heard while walking around, it was such a change of pace from the U.S.

May

Active coding stopped for the first two weeks while I drove across the United States. It was an incredible experience that I would recommend to everyone. My dog and I saw so much of the beautiful land of America, truly breathtaking. After arriving in California I was able to spend time with family to celebrate my father's doctoral graduation. At the of the month, I settled in San Diego where I began the hardest working period in my year.

June - July

For two and a half months straight, I followed a gym program, studied for my exam, cooked food every day, and coded for six to eight hours. During this time I finished my database which contained 450 exercises all containing a demonstration video and necessary data. I also kept a regular schedule with food videos posted to Instagram. My app progressed nicely, but one of the biggest problems and time wasters I had was returning to fix old code. A big lesson learned is to just get it all done, then go back and revise. Revising along the way is such a waste of time.

August

During this month I passed my CSCS Exam and officially became a certified strength coach. I continued to work on my app, preparing it for the friends and family test in October. All of the legal documents were created by my lawyers to be prepared ahead of time.

September

This month I started to reach out my app to friends and family, fixing all the bugs and errors that came with it. I learned a lot about the distribution and testing process during this time. After it was all sorted, I prepared for my trip back to Boston, and then my move to Paris. c

October - November

In these two months, I was able to study at my dream school in Paris. I learned a lot about cooking efficiency, structure, timing, and skills. I was lucky enough to travel around France to Bordeaux and Lyon where I learned a lot about wine and ate a lot of amazing food. I also took French lessons to learn my third language. It is such a fun language but there are so many rules and small nuances.

December

In the final month of 2023, I finished off culinary school strong and flew to Japan to spend time with my family. I ate a lot of good food, took a lot of notes of flavors and techniques, and relaxed before another hard-working year.

I’m looking forward to all that 2024 has to offer, and all that I can build.