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.