Summer Lovin’

May 17th, 2008

I am just a few days away from finishing my sophomore year of college, which means that after five classes, a job, and freelance web design on the side, I am finally about to be free for the summer.

Free to find new hobbies, foods, read another Ayn Rand book, or hell, maybe even find religion.

Well, not really. Summer may be here, but my calendar will certainly not be empty. If all goes right, my current job as a web designer for a small, but quickly growing, renewable energy and HR consulting firm will continue through the summer, and hopefully I’ll find some small freelance jobs to do as well.

That will take most of my time. But I have several goals, too:

  1. Launch Dawning Valley. We have a great set of writers, and I think this is going to be pretty damn cool. Expect an introduction article in the next few weeks for Dawning Valley and our writers.
  2. Learn Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I am decent at HTML and CSS, but I’d like to be competent with RoR as well. I haven’t quite started learning it it yet, beyond reading the book I bought (which is, unfortunately, based on an outdated version of RoR, which should make it even more fun), but Ruby looks like an absolutely beautiful language to code in, and RoR looks like an excellent framework to develop in.
  3. Read some more Ayn Rand, most likely Anthem. This is what I do for fun. Seriously.
  4. Stick to a workout schedule. I consistently went to the gym and ran for a month or a month and a half, but it all fell apart in the last few weeks as finals approached. This summer: I will keep the schedule.
  5. Relax: I’ve kind of gotten used to living with stress, and it has become a normal state for me. I need to break that.
  6. Most importantly: Spend time with my lovely girlfriend and my family. Heidi and I have been together for nearly three years now, and they’ve been wonderful. She attends another university a hundred miles from our hometown, so unfortunately we do not see each other as often as we’d like. Summer gives us an opportunity to fix that.

    I miss being with my family, too, especially my brother now that we’ve both grown up to the point where we don’t want to kill each other every time we see each other. I’m looking forward to being with them all summer.

Those are my goals. I’m sure you’ll hear more about a few of them throughout the summer, and especially the first one.