Overall feeling – life is good but tiring 😂!
Reading
15! More than double of last year, really felt on a role later part of the year, possibly because some of the books were so good. Maybe correlated to child age though, will be interesting to see how next year goes!
I Started So I…Won’t Finish
Maybe another reason I read more, I was more brutal with the cut, which probably lead to finding more I really enjoyed.
State Of Wonder
The Poppy War
Kleptopia
Say Nothing
Serious sweet
London Bridge in America
Signal Moon
Writing
Only 4 and that includes the SITIR which aren’t really writing. I feel like I want to write (but not sure why) but I just haven’t found something that keeps me consistent. Lower priority really but will persevere when the mood takes me.
Coding/Tech/Work
Explored a fair bit.
Spent a decent amount of time on ZK. Still find it super interesting. I don’t actually have the skills or motivation to contribute at the base layer of the cryptography. There are a number of interesting protocols that products can use to build ZK applications (e.g. Axiom, Risc0) and I’ve played around with them but sometimes they feel like products looking for a problem. Will keep following though.
I really enjoyed diving into the world of on-chain games via MUD/Lattice. Originally I entered a hackathon. I then got invited down to London to their week of exploration, this was really interesting and fun, got to meet some interesting folks and experienced a different culture than the DeFi one I’m so used to. Following that I made a couple of fairly large contributions to their codebase and I enjoyed getting some shoutouts for that. One thing I learned through this was I don’t have nearly as much spare time as I used to for hackathons/contributions and I ended up putting a bit too much pressure on myself to get things done.
Balancer had a pretty crazy year. The vulnerability/hack was wild to be part of. General bear market sentiment and burnout saw a number of big changes personnel wise. The onsite in Milan was great and personally I felt this was an inflection point leading to some clear direction for the next stage and I can get behind that. End of year brought the new challenge of absorbing integrations responsibilities into our team and excited to see how that goes.
Next Steps
I’ve been taking some time to figure out what motivates me, what the priorities are and what I should work on. Still not 100% clear but definitely have things a bit straighter.
Going to give my best shot at this next stage at Balancer. I still really appreciate working there. I like the leadership and my teammates and DeFi as an industry still has huge potential for impact. This work should fulfill my main itch for coding related work.
I should be brutal at making sure any side projects/hackathons/contributions I start are small, stress free and genuinely interesting. This will avoid unnecessary burnout and time wasted – I especially don’t want to sacrifice family time.
I’m going to try using some of my spare time to research, explore and use new tech. I enjoy this kind of thing (and have been doing it in an unsystematic way for a long time). Most likely crypto related but doesn’t have to be. Few resons for this – best way to find interesting things to work on, potential airdrops, find products for my own personal use. Could be a natural writing topic too.
Watching
25 watched over the year, similar to last year.
Combat Girls – Nice! 4/5
How I Became A Gangster – Not great. 2.5/5
The Croods – new Gracie fav! 5/5
Narvic – interesting to see a different part of the conflict. History is fairly written by the victors. 3/5.
RRR – My first Hindi movie. Quite an epic. Enjoyable. 4/5
Black Panther 2 – one of the better ones but too long. 3.5/5
The Menu – Pretty entertaining. 3.5/5
Counter Punch – Boxing life is a hard life! Got into the characters by the end. 4/5
Once – a “nice” musical type movie. Bit of a disappointing ending but maybe it’s more like real life. 3.5
Super Mario – First successful cinema trip with GG and it was good 
4.5
Savages – Not as good as Once Were Warriors but entertaining enough. 3.5
Mother – Meh. Actually better than I expected. Nice scenery 
2.2
Where the crawdads fly – good. Decent story. 4
Blood and Gold – Pretty decent. Well done I thought. 4
Covenant – Arseholes! 3.9
The Wild And Wonderful Whites Of West Virginia – wooof, crazy. 4
Ad Astra – very meh. Can understand the bad reviews. 2
Spiderhead – Not bad, not great. Bit predictable. 3
The Wonder – Bleak but nicely done. Strong ending. 4
Kick Like Tayla – One for Gracie in the future. 3.8
Slow West – it was a western and I liked it 
4.1
Bull – Kind of average but quirky twist at end. 3.5
The downfall of wirecard – seems like more to the story but pretty entertaining. 3.5
Living – Enjoyed this and made me never want to work in a shit job! 3.8
The Killer – slick, I liked it, stupid ending though. 4
Health
Overall health feels good, maybe more aches and pains and tiredness but to be expected really.
Still going with BJJ, originally felt kind of negative about my effort here but looking back I competed in a competition (won 2 lost 2) and got promoted to 2 stripes so thats pretty good! I think the feeling of negativity comes from 2 places. Firstly I am comparing my progress to others – I should stop this as we’re each running our own race (also I’m not comparing myself to the guys who didn’t stick it, and there’s lots of them)! Secondly, deep down I probably know I can give more. This is perhaps a bit unfair to myself given the fact I’m comparing it to my past rugby efforts, life and priorities are different now. I do think I can try to push myself a bit harder by staying for all the rolls and not bailing but the main thing is to keep going and continue making this a part of my life.