Title: Another decade down the drain
Category: Blog
Tags: /dev/diary
Date: 2020-01-01

Now that the last decade is officially over, there's some things I
want to write about. I do this less so for others, and more for
myself.  Around this time of year, people usually make new year's
resolutions, which is not quite what this is.  Instead, I want to
reflect on what the last ten years have meant for me, and some plans I
have for the next decade.

I graduated school in 2011, started uni twice, dropped out twice (for
consistency), and found computer science and programming as my
passion.  I moved to Berlin, worked many jobs, at a bunch of different
companies and finally, towards the end of this year, made myself
independent as a freelancer.

Why am I mentioning any of this?  Well, I don't think it's really
possible to plan for the future, so I won't try.  Instead, I want to
set myself a goal for the next ten years.  Something that has nothing
to do with my career, or even a hobby that I hold right now. But let
me back up a bit…

Over 15 years ago (oof) I did an exchange program, which had me living
in France for six months.  During this time I became pretty fluent in
French.  Over time, unfortunately I forgot a lot of it again.  Then,
over the last few years I started learning a few other languages,
apart from English and German (I consider myself bilingual). I am
conversational in French and Esperanto, and can understand a few words
of Russian.

So what's my goal for 2030?  Easy: I want to learn ten languages well.
This includes becoming fluent in the languages I already know
partially (French, Esperanto, Russian), as well as learning a few new
languages entirly.  Some that I am interested in are Arabic, Catalan,
Spanish, Scottish Gaelic and Kurdish.  I don't know if it will be this
exact set that I will end up learning, but it's a good starting point.

Most importantly, I think that a decade is enough time to undertake
this venture.  I don't know where I will be in ten years, or what I'll
be doing and neither do I think that it's ever really possible for me
to guess.  But whatever my life looks lke, I hope that I'll be
speaking a lot more languages.
