Log my life & my goals for 2026/Bính Ngọ

Logging

It may be a well-known trivia, but if you're one of today's lucky 10000: “blog” is short for “web log”. Some kind of log you put on the web.

Log is a collection of records of what happened. In software engineering, logging is very important, both in the programs themselves (e.g. debug logs, error logs) and outside the programs (changelogs, work logs), because when something goes wrong, you can dig through them to find out what happened. Work logs are also analogous to grimoire — keep one, fellow computer witches.

A daily personal private log is commonly known as a diary or journal. This kind of log often also includes author's feeling about the events that happened in addition to the events themselves. Which is helpful, I suppose, if you want to look back and process and analyze your emotions¹. It's also helpful if you feel like you're doing nothing being under the daily grind, but that's often not true. Log your life, and you'll see the progress. If there's no progress? It will irk you so you'll want to make some.

Blogs nowadays are often on the side of opinion essay and lose its original meaning. Not always the case though. For example, this one logs weekly and this one logs monthly. The former is more personal and the latter more work-ish. A lot of the time, blogs are just boring updates, but how are they different from social media updates/posts/statuses/whatever? Friends generally want to know what you're up to from time to time, and I think this is another neat purpose for a public log. It is not tied to any social media, which is more power to you.

My achievements last year

Around the end of last year, in a chat with a friend, who was like me, being gloomy about not achieving anything, which is, as I said above, not true. He revealed to me that he kept a yearly log, because it was easy for him to focus on the negative stuff than the positive achievements. And he did achieve a lot, both professionally and socially. I did not have such log, so I had to dig other stuff to remind myself of what I've accomplished.

One of the things I'm most proud of last year was that I started a habit of running every week, in addition to cycling to the gym almost every day. Not only that, I also get two friends to run with me. Of course, running for a day then being idles for the rest of the week isn't healthy either, but that's not the case. The two friends ended up being more active in the week as well, which I believe is a result of me encouraging them to run.

As for the software projects, I managed to implement a proof-of-concept for the algorithm of TELEX implementation I'd do for florisboard, but I haven't done the latter. This static site generator I use to create this site is also in usable state², but I think I'll refactor it further this year. A few changes to my custom client for Akkoma was done, but no new release last year.

I laid out my goal to read 4 books, and I did exactly that: I finished Tous les hommes sont mortels and the Tam Thể trilogy. I haven't finish my writing on the trilogy though.

Goals

Logging

Last year was a silent year for this site, so this year I want to change that. I'll do several kinds of logging, with different frequencies:

• Private log(i.e. diary): every day
• Web log (public): monthly, summarizing notable personal updates that I'm willing to share publicly, as well as projects if any. This doesn't mean that I will only publish monthly.
• Reading log: Whenever I finish a book
• Watching log: Whenever I finish a movie or a TV series

The reading log is currently under reconstruction, and I also have a few unfinished drafts that I don't want to publish yet. As for watching log: it's empty and I removed it for now.

Due to the changed purpose of the “blog”, I'll consider separating the essays into its own section. To be fair, essays are often just logging of your opinions about some events that occurred around that time, so they might stay. Anyways, sorry in advance if I mess up the feeds.

Reading

I plan to read 5 books this year:

• 2 in Vietnamese (I already finished one)
• 2 in English
• 1 in French

Health

During last year, I have a totally wrecked sleeping habits. At one point I reached a terrible state of sleep deprivation that felt like intoxication. I eventually got sober, but then kept staying up late again and only sleep 5-6 hours a day. This year, I want to improve on it. I'll sleep 7 hours daily in June and 8 hours by December.

Projects

I'm really split on whether to work on improving pensiv or florisboard this year. The TELEX implementation would have wider and more meaningful impact, but it'd require setting up an Android development environment, which I really don't have the spoons for. The SSG improvement would mostly just let me write new plugins more easily.

For non-software stuff, I've wanted to get back to drawing and also dip a bit into fiction writing. There's no measures for those, but you might hear updates.

This site

I also just joined envs webring and the hacker webring. Will be looking to join more webrings.

Found a site for pen pals all over the world via fedi. I'll check it and consider registering. Or, you could just send me emails if you want to be pen pals winks.