A letter from January 1st, 2018

Dear FutureMe, It's that time of the year: I got a FutureMe email weeks ago and have been procrastinating sending ahead one. In that time, I have seen a really really good movie (Call Me By Your Name) that has surfaced a lot of forgotten memories from the 1980s: dealing with my ****** identity, my first love, and the love and support from Grandma when that first love went bad. It's been a couple of decades since a movie (Wild Reeds) touched me like that holy Miley that ending works me over every time...! I'm still processing everything, but it really reminded me of just how fortunate I was then, in spite of the emotional messiness of the time for me. Enough of that. Status report: I haven't begun programming my game(s) yet (more procrastination!) but I did manage to crush my thumb -- and lose a month-and-a-half of good October and November cycling. A reminder to be careful, I suppose... Also: cryptocurrency trading has suddenly become a major and fast-growing profit-center for the Chicago trading firms with bitcoin zooming from $350.00 to $20,000.00 apiece in a year or so, and futures contracts are now traded on CME and CBOE starting 2 weeks ago (and now there are 1,000+ different cryptocurrencies!): another boat I've missed -- though I continue to send out applications and resumes, I could have built up some experience trading bitcoin on the side and would have been in there (or a billionaire, or both) -- crazy...! Over the course of a few months, I have learned that: DRW, Jump, DV Trading, Akuna Capital and a couple more beside are all hiring cryptocurrency traders. From out of nowhere! I'll see what the new year brings, but it feels like I'm a day late, and a bitcoin short -- again...! I've decided to try programming small browser plugins in Python, to jumpstart my larger programming goal and to get a little Python programming and cryptocurrency experience (a plugin that tracks crypto prices in near-realtime from somebody else's webpage to a small corner of the browser). Just a little "provable programmatic thing" to take into an interview, should that ever occur...! Once that's done, I'll have the confidence to start programming the bigger gaming apps...! We'll see what the next letter brings...!