Its the 1st of October. Dreads me to say it but we’ve just entered the 4th quarter of the year. It’s a cliche but to me, it really did feel like the year’s just flown by.

I can’t exactly remember what I promised myself at the start of the year. I think I committed to a lot of things, none of which, to my frustration, are written or documented.

I consider this day zero.

Just a few weeks past my birthday, like every other birthday, I feel reborn with a refreshed sense of enthusiasm about the world and my part in it. I’ll spare the details for now but the few things I look forward to for now are:

  1. Blogging/Writing every day
  2. (Re)Learning math

For 1, I’ve always wanted to put words out there. Friction kept getting the better of me. Until I found and read a blog about Jordan’s writings archive where he challenged himself to write everyday for 30 days.

At first glance, I didn’t think there was anything special about that. However, just the idea of putting your thoughts in writing and publishing it daily felt extremely captivating (at least to me, I feel I’m relatively difficult to hold the interest of). It was something I’ve been meaning to do, been day-dreaming about it even.

Just to be clear, (and inspired by Jordan’s anonimised blog) here are some reasons why:

Why write?

  • I’m writing to think better, for myself, and to reflect often, about my life. I want to be able to improve my thoughts and in extension my writing; to think and storytell better. Having this as a daily to-do means that I’m dedicating time for myself

What am I writing about?

  • I’m going to write about things I’m working on/putting my energy in.

How long am I writing for?

  • I’m starting simple and shooting for 2 weeks (14 days). Habits are difficult to instil but 14 days sounds doable (for now - I’d be more than happy to keep going after).

Separately, why math?

  • There’s this dream I have of doing postgrad research within ML and particularly in probability and statistics (I could write more about this..), and then to eventually work in a related domain. My work, unfortunately for now, doesn’t give this kind of stimulation and I’ve slacked off with my numbers game for some time due to it.
  • The way I’m doing this is through gifting myself a 1 year’s subscription to MathAcademy and grinding through their comprehensive syllabus for a year and see how that pans out. I’m optimistic and am looking forward to embracing the suck that comes with failing to understand. I’ve missed that feeling, yearning for it even. It feels/sounds sad to think about as I write this, but thems the brakes and I’m ready to hustle an hour’s worth of work every day for the next year.

Disclaimer: I’m doing this thing where I’m pouring out thoughts on this draft, not majorly focused on editing. I’m starting to find that to get back into writing, I just have to let it all out, edit later. Lesser emphasis on the latter for now at least.

The truth is, this is all for myself.

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”

Issac Asimov