Well, this is what I get for procrastinating too long on this one. Too late to resteem the post which is one of the requirements. Still, I wrote something for My 2018: Achievements and Failures. As such I just won’t use their main tag. I hope they won’t mind me using the other one.

Life seems to go in cycles where I am either spending the year trying set up for future or I’m enjoying the fruits of my labor. This year was almost entirely a set up for future years to come. Some things worked out and others are no longer on my future roadmaps.

Life Goals

I both wanted to start a garden this year and start working on some education for a possible future in another field. One of these laid the groundwork for a better 2019 and the other was a complete failure.

Success In Growing A Small Garden

The last time I had tried to grow some of my own food was when I was just a kid. So in 2018, I wanted to grow some peppers and other plants as well. I even document some of it in a weekly post for quite some time on Steemit. My last update was about two months ago in Been A Few Weeks.

I ended up successfully growing in 2018 red Italian peppers, big bertha peppers, green peppers, and jalapenos. I must say after enjoying during the summer and fall months some fresh peppers from my own garden. I find store-bought produce to be rather muted in taste and the texture to not be as enjoyable.

The growing months where mostly filled with me learning from the mistake and trying again. The potters I selected had everything from not being big enough to drainage issues and I had to transplant and replant most of everything. For a while, I was combating whiteflies, caterpillars, and a whole host of other things trying to get a free lunch. At the end with patient and conviction, I overcame and got to enjoy consuming some of what I grew. I had a number of failures as well but this is about the success!

I had so many jalapenos at one point they were going into every single meal I had. That plant just went crazy giving me over 20 at a time. Pizza why not adds some jalapenos. Omelets you bet. Tacos why taco not? Heck, I even was putting them into tuna! I also gave away a fair amount to the people around me. That right there should be how life progresses after hard work and perseverance.

I also tried out stuffed pepper for the first time this year with some meat, rice, and cheese in it. Quite simple and yet so amazing. Next year I would not mind getting more bell pepper plants just so I could enjoy more of that. I could see myself enjoying something like that almost weekly.

This was defiantly one of my highlights of the year. I found it more enjoyable than I thought I would and relaxing as well. I plan on expanding out just a tad in 2019. Only so much physical space and budget I can allocate to it. Since this sure did go over what I expected dealing with the setbacks I’ll have to keep that in mind as well moving forward

Failure In Supply Chain Management

I think it is very important to be reinvesting in yourself and looking for ways to adapt. I can see it in my own local markets that certain skill sets are just going unfilled. Naturally, I was not the only one to notice as well. While I was not expecting the pay to stay as high as it has been after the demand is covered by the time I get into the field. I was at least hoping this year to start taking a step down that path. If nothing else I thought I have a desire for such knowledge in the future.

The plan was to take what I thought was an introduction class to Supply Chain Management that had no requirements. After finishing that off I would meet requirements for other classes and take some of those throughout the rest of the year. I was not going go to hard in trying to take a bunch of classes at once. I just wanted to dip my toes in and still keep up everything else I’m involved with in life.

After that, I felt for my local area I might get able to talk someone into giving me an entry level position and working up into this one day while taking other classes after laying the groundwork in 2018 to mid-2019 of these started classes.

I got into the class and day one despite it not being stated anywhere or even coming up when I ask some questions before sighing up. They informed everyone it would be extremely helpful if you already completed another class in the program regarding the mathematics this course would use.

They were not kidding either. Week one they were already referencing material covered in there other class. I thought to myself since I enjoy self-pace learning and teaching myself along the way it would still be possible. Long story short I just did not have enough hours in the day to catch up on my rusty math skills along with everything else in life. The math class also was not something you would take alongside they were reference stuff already a month into that class.

I also noticed many just joined the class because of the high medium salary advertised. They really had no interested in whatever it was as long as “it paid well.” I expected that salary to decrease quite a bit in the coming years. Granted those people won’t have to worry about that. They were too busy asking how to download files (it’s 2018 people), and they had worse math skills then I had. So things were not going smooth and I was expecting it to be a very long semester.

After a little while, I drop out before full payment was expected. The other class I realized I needed was not even available for quite some time. The into the class if I recall was not year round either. So I would have been delayed well over a year in my plans.

Perhaps in 2019, I’ll focus my efforts on something else. I never did take the math class either. I was not quite happy with the quality of the first class and how that ended.

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Photos were taken and content written by @enjar.