2 years ago I made a list of 10 goals for the next two years:

  1. Job in engineering and/or natural language processing at a company that does AI work
  2. Maintain connection with reading
  3. Make a very good cup of coffee
  4. Find peace in small moments of life
  5. Move out of San Diego
  6. Meet new people and maintain connections
  7. Appreciation of the arts and language
  8. Travel and explore the world
  9. Maintain a healthy body
  10. Give up reliance on material or temporary pleasures

It’s now a few months away from being those two years and I’m so proud to say that I reached all the goals I had made for myself. A lot of them were not in the ways I thought I would, but I have absolutely succeeded. It’s time for a new set, but first let’s look at how I met each of these in the past two years.

1. Job in engineering and/or natural language processing at a company that does AI work

This was probably my biggest goal, and definitely the one that I most definitely succeeded in. I have the absolute best job at Explosion, the makers of spaCy and Prodigy. I work on machine learning and community outreach and cool projects, and I’m learning so much and creating good quality work. My coworkers are the most wonderful people and I feel so grateful and awed to be working with them. I couldn’t be more certain that we are one of the best NLP/ML companies out there.

2. Maintain connection with reading

This one is arguably the one I struggled with the most, and maybe still haven’t reached to the extent that I wanted to. However, I still have read a lot in the past 2 years, and am continually working on making it an integral part of my daily routine. There have been several time stretched when I have done really well, and several where it’s fallen off the radar.

3. Make a very good cup of coffee

I am a somewhat coffee master 👩‍🍳. Well, kind of. I can make a really good pour over IMO, and my French Press is pretty decent too. I’ve learned a lot about what I like in a bean and grind, ratios and all that. I definitely still very very very much love coffee, and I’ve only gone slightly broke because of it.

4. Find peace in small moments of life

I haven’t recently been able to see too many sunsets and sunrises, it’s not as easy as it was in San Diego. But, I do find many quiet moments in the week and have definitely gotten better at sitting still and enjoying a nugget of time. Coffee has helped with that, or sitting and getting a drink at Cosmic Coffee, or even writing or reading.

5. Move out of San Diego

Although Austin was somewhat short lived and I’m back with my parents now, I definitely did this. I’m excited to continue that freedom journey and move officially to Berlin.

6. Meet new people and maintain connections