Reflecting on Q2 and H1, Looking forward to Q3 and on

About 3 months ago, I revisited my goals and reflected on the first quarter of 2025 in a newly established quarterly cadence. Each day I looked back at it, I was reminded of the priorities I had set for myself and helped me stay focused. However, I'm always keeping my eyes peeled in my life for novel opportunities and paths that have revealed themselves to me.

And with that, I look back at whether I did what I set out to do.

Reflecting on Q2

My goals from my last reflection were split across 4 categories: music, career, fitness, and language. Thus, I will also reflect across my progress in these 4 categories.

Music:

• I continue my bi-weekly voice lessons and can feel my singing skills improve. I posted an impromptu cover of Demi Lovato's Skyscraper on my Instagram as proof of my progress. Some days, my voice is in better condition; on other days, my voice struggles. I look forward to the days when I can pull off all the karaoke I could ever want.
• Have I mentioned that I'm working on an EP with a friend with the intent of creating a few song demos that may turn into a musical? The goal is to have them be performable live and recorded. With that in mind, I've noodled a bit around Logic Pro, found samples I liked, and have even taken my MIDI controller with me on trips to work on music.
• I've found opportunities to work on my improv skills and ear training at jam sessions, bringing different instruments with me at each session. I've realized that flute is one of the better instruments to play as its sound carries a lot better over the noise of the guitars, drums, and bass. I've made some progress with my fingerstyle guitar skills and have recorded videos as evidence. I do need to focus on fretboard fluency and getting my fingerstyle up to quicker tempos.

Career:

• I seem to have overestimated the amount of time I'd be able to dedicate to the GaTech HCI courses. I do still aim to complete the certificate. As for the Design book (The Design of Everyday Things), I did make a lot more progress through the book and aim to finish it by the end of this month – July.

Fitness:

• I have not spent much time with calisthenics in the past quarter, but I did end up getting back into climbing to prep for my midwest travels in late May during which I planned to visit climbing gyms. Due to this, I can tell that my upper body strength has increased a bit and my climbing stamina and confidence has improved.

Language:

• I started asking ChatGPT for resources to be able to read and immerse myself in my target languages. With French, I decided to change my phone's main operating language to French. I subscribed to Le Monde and decided my fluency was good enough to get through some news– I even upgraded my 5-year-old tablet to make my news reading a bit more comfortable. With Korean, I downloaded some short story reading apps. I also registered for the Swedish classes that will start in August (Q3).

Onwards to Q3

One of the main reasons why I wasn't able to finish the HCI courses and the design book were due to an existential crisis I was having relating to my career. And after some conversations, I ended up taking advantage of AI and came up with a side project for myself to do, making a silly Public Spotify Playlist website for people to explore my music tastes. I started building it last month. With that came a new twist to my career goals.

Last month, I also gave myself the challenge of cooking for myself and ordering out never– except for when my food is reimbursed by work or I'm out and busy. I have been successful at cooking a variety of new foods and experimenting with new recipes. It's been good to be able to enjoy cooking for myself.

With that, I will list out my main focuses for Q3.

Music:

• Lay out more solid lyrics and arrangements for the songs I had assigned myself for the musical EP in LogicPro. Rerecord some vocals. Continue voice lessons and straw-phonation to strengthen my voice and train my vocal folds.
• Explore pick accuracy practice with my electric guitar, with the goal of being able to incorporate that into my LogicPro arrangements.

Career:

• Finish the Design book by end of July. Conclude my HCIxIII course by end of August.
• Implement mobile view of my playlist site by end of month, and clean up the repository with a readme.
  • After that's done, write a technical blog post about how I built this project and used AI as part of my process.
• Continue attending networking and social events hosted by Cornell NorCal and other events to make new connections. Attend in office events for work and play with Copilot Studio to explore Agentic AI and how to make custom agents with third party tools that aren't off-the-shelf available.

Fitness:

• Given that I bought more ankle protectors, climb more at the climbing gym on weekends/during the week and not just use the membership for Yoga. Though I'd rather focus my time/energy on maintaining fitness rather than training for more strength. Opting rather to experience a wide variety of activities than focus on mastering one – rollerblading and ice skating to come into this mix.
• Train my balance on the Balance Beam by The Foot Collective. The sponsored ads finally got me.

Language:

• Start Swedish classes in August. Continue my Duolingo for French, Danish, and Swedish. With French, aim to test out as fast as possible through the levels. Focus on widening vocab and recalling grammar patterns.
• Continue reading news in French and Korean. Progress through short stories in Chinese and explore ways of improving my more advanced language skills for professional use.