Update on the year 2019

2019 has been a weird year.

I don't feel like it's been all too good for my mental health, as I've definitely experienced burnout, mayhaps even depression. Suffice to say, the lows were low. I feel a bit like I procrastinated all there was to procrastinate.

It wasn't all bad, though - I'd say it was right up there in my top 25.

In trying to get some more work-life balance, I did get back to playing StarCraft - I'd cut it out of my life previously, along with all gaming - but I figured I do need some of that competitive drive in my life, and I still think there's a lot it can still teach me. You wouldn't drop chess from your life if you were passionate about it, right? So far, it's been treating me all right.

At the start of December, I started a research software job at the Institute for Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion here in Warsaw, Poland! This is also where I'll be writing and developing my master's thesis, related to Bayesian inference for plasma diagnostics on Wendelstein 7-x, using Python and more specifically PyMC3. A step forwards for modern, open, reproducible and maintainable science software! At least, I hope so. :)

I was planning on putting some photos, stats etc here, but I haven't found the time to get to do those yet (remember all that procrastination? Yeah, it's coming back to bite me in the predictive posterior), and Matthew Rocklin says I should write shorter blog posts more frequently, anyway, and that sounds like good advice.

Thus, to get this out the door more quickly... onwards to 2020!