“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”
– James Bryant Conant
Hey everyone! It’s been a whirlwind couple of months, and I’ve completely missed updating the blog. So much has happened—some wonderful, some challenging. But that’s the beauty of life, right?
Here’s some of the cool things that have happened:
I am now an… Artist!
I finally have an art portfolio website—which I created myself (nerd alert). Check it out at art.rituljain.com. It’s filled with some of my best paintings, and I can’t wait to add more soon! Exciting times ahead.
I had my first painting displayed in an actual art gallery!
Yes, you read that right. I named it “Whispering Peaks,” and it was hung in the A/NT Gallery near the Space Needle. Life milestone achieved!
One of my paintings got selected by Seattle University for their invitational art gallery!
There’s going to be a jury to review the works on May 22nd (Thursday). This is huge for me, as someone valued my artwork enough to include it. They even featured it on their official website!
Link: https://gallery.seattlecentral.edu/2024-student-invitational-exhibition
Now that’s a lot about art. Here’s some more great stuff:
I completed 1000 miles on my bike (cycle)!
Crazy, right? 1000 miles is 1600 km, and that’s a lot. I managed to do it in 9 months, which I think is amazing! I’ve discovered a bunch of hidden spots around Seattle thanks to my bike adventures.
I got promoted to a Software Development Engineer 2 at work!!
Super happy about this one. Long overdue, but totally worth the wait. Excited about the pay bump and advancing in my career as a software developer.
I completed the first course for Machine Learning Specialization on Coursera!
This was a long-pending item on my list—finally done! 1 out of 3 courses completed. Andrew Ng is a genius. I learned about supervised and unsupervised learning, algorithms, and more. Now, I need to put this knowledge into practice and create some cool projects!
Idea -> I should create a subdomain data.rituljain.com for my Machine Learning projects!
I guess that’s a lot for 2 months, right?
Now, here’s some not-so-good things that happened:
I lost my bike—it got stolen.
I parked it at the wrong stand, and it got stolen by some random street guy. Filed a police complaint and had to pay a hefty fine to the bike leasing company because of it ($500 poof). Need to take a step back and focus on the basics.
I’ve started spending more—need to get back on track with finances.
Well, it’s not a LOT, but still, I need to do a bit better here! I did start reviewing my finances on a month to month basis and its been going great!
Wrapping Up
Lots of great things and a bit of not-so-great things. Hoping to be more consistent with the blog now! Exciting things are lined up for the coming months—trips to Mount Shasta, Glacier National Park, and Turkey are some starters. Super excited about what’s next!
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