Community

I think community is pretty neat. There are so many forms of it and it can be thought of in so many different ways. Community can be the people who lived around you while you were growing up, could be people at your church, friends at school, relatives, people with similar interests, etc. Community can even people a ton of people across the world you've never even met.

One community I'm thinking of specifically is the iOS developer community. I realized if I'm going to get serious about doing iOS development I'm probably going to need ways to stay interested and stay motivated. So I took to Reddit, Twitter, and some other social medias to join as many groups and follow as many people with similar interests as I could. It's interesting how without even necessarily interacting directly with others one can feel a sense of community. In a more "real" sense I have also started attending monthly meetups with other iOS developers around the Twin Cities. This has been huge for me because in the couple years I've been interested in this, I've never met any other iOS developers in person. It's a really neat experience to be able to talk with others who I share this hobby with and it gives me an opportunity to learn from others who know a lot more than I do.

I think community is such a crucial element to the human experience because it allows us to help one another in hard times and it allows us to share our joys as well. Also, community gives us a chance to share what makes us special while simultaneously getting to experience that from others as well. My other favorite part about community is it gives us other people to interact with who we can learn from. Every single person out there has something they can teach you.

If you are interested in something and you want to share it with like-minded people, look hard for an existing community. Whether it be in person (www.meetup.com is awesome) or online (there is a subreddit for everything), find one and help motivate others and let them help motivate you. If one doesn't exist, try starting one! Odds are, you aren't the only person out there interested in breeding cat/chinchilla hybrids.


Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll start posting these a bit more frequently!

The Time is Now

I started this blog about 4 years ago. To date I have about 15 posts. My original goal was to blog at least once a month.

Let us do the math:

12 posts a year X 4 years = 48 posts. 

48 posts - 15ish posts I've published = 33ish posts that I never got around to

33 chances to share my brilliance with the masses missed. How many people missed out on life revelations because I never shared my wisdom with the public? This question keeps me up at night. You poor souls.

All kidding aside, this is just one example of something that I've wanted to do in my life but have never followed through on. I think we all have those things.

"I would like to learn a second language.
I want to become a better cook.
I am interested in learning more about facial expressions.
I want to lose weight.
I want to learn how to pick a lock."

These are all examples of things I've heard friends of mine say. The question becomes, why haven't they been accomplished yet?

I won't pretend I know what everyone's situation is so I'll only answer that question for myself. For years my excuse was "college." This was a perfect one and honestly probably pretty valid. During college I was so busy doing homework that free time was sometimes just spent hanging around with friends and being present in the moment.

However, it is now 2015 and I've been out of college for about 8 months. I have been working at my job for about 6 months. Aside from a couple tests I have to take for work that will be done this week, I don't have homework. There aren't any major excuses anymore. When I get home from work, whether I'm tired or it was a long day, that is my time.

#1 goal for 2015: write an iOS app that I can successfully get into the Apple Appstore. 

iOS development has been a large interest of mine since sophomore year and senior year I finally worked on an app. However I have largely stopped working on it while giving myself excuses to not work on it:

- I don't have any good, unique ideas
- After programming all day at work I don't want to come home and do it
- I'll do it after I finish both work tests
- Video games have also been a distraction

I'm done making excuses.

2015 is my year and this will be a goal that I will be accomplishing. Another goal that I have is to ensure that I do not lose my ability to converse with others in Spanish.

I also plan to blog more often, I'd love it if they could start some fun conversations. :)