Greetings people,

I have been meaning to start writing entries or "logs" to my portfolio for way too long. I am now finally getting to it after remaking my website for the millionth time.

The intention behind these entries is to help me share about what I am learning, while also sharing it with others to entertain, help, or inspire them. Moreover, I have wanted to further explore writing as it's very soothing and I find myself writing less and less with AI, so you'll have to bear with my grammar.

2026

Now that it is 2026, I'd like to share some things I want to accomplish this year to look back on and hold myself accountable. I remember thinking on New Year's Eve how fast time seems to move, and just like that we are 6 days in already.

I'll break up the goals into 3 categories. 1. Professional & Technical, 2. Movement, and 3. Personal.

Professional & Technical

• Get a job at an epic company
• Become proficient in vim
• Go to 5 hackathons(two planned so far)
• Contribute to an open-source project
• Cool solo project(few ideas in mind)

Movement

• Run a sub 4 hour marathon (running cowtown marathon March 1st(follow me on strava @jordan joelson))
• Half ironman
• Lead climbing certification
• Get clean muscle ups
• be able to hold hand stand

Personal

• Write weekly here
• Work on my tonality
• level up my meal prepping
• breath work daily

I will most likely come back here to add or make some of them more specific.

Conclusion

I plan to write on here weekly, improving the quality of them as I go with visuals and better structure.

Remember to not let moments pass you by, and do it NOW.

"I wish you a good night or a good day - and a good life. All the love all the power" - Wim Hof

Hello again.

I'm a few days behind on writing this, but it worked out well as I have more to share now.

Since last time, I've taken it pretty easy besides the past few days. I've gotten to spend time with friends before they head back to school, played some golf, got a few runs in, cooked a 5-star pasta, coded, and got I accepted into the NASA L'SPACE Program where I will be doing proposal writing which should be cool. I've been consistent for the most part, although, despite my goals in log 1, I'm still not grasping the true purpose behind life as it feels the main piece of the puzzle is missing. Is it just what you make of it? For glory? Divine purpose? Idk. I'd say I have a lot of figuring out to do, but I suppose that is a part of the fun. So maybe it's about learning to be yourself. Besides all that confusion, these past few days were busy because I got to go to my first hackathon for the year!

Hackathon: A short competition where people or teams create projects to solve specific challenges, often supported by sponsor tracks. At the end, judges review the projects and choose winners based on criteria.

NexHacks

The hacakthon I attended this past weekend was Turing City NexHacks at Carnegie Mellon University hosting people from the UK, Canada, Hungary, and all across the US. So I flew out for pittsburgh Friday morning with my friend Toni. The hackathon opening ceremony was only on saturday which left us all of Friday to explore the city and ideate.

Saturday morning rolled around, so we headed to CMU to wait for the opening ceremony. Once we arrived, several sponsors were tabling so we spoke with many of them. At 11:30am the ceremony began, and we got to hear from several successful speakers, along with recieving all information on the different tracks.

Next, we looked for a spot to setup to figure out what we would build. Our brainstroming process ended up going till 5:00pm where we finally felt that we had a decent idea. At 5:00pm we went to a fireside chat that hosted the ceo of trainwell.

After all that, we finally got to coding at about 7:00pm so it was already getting pretty late.

Our idea

We ended up deciding on on an AI pickle ball coach, since one of the sponsors, Overshoot, an SDK(Software Development Kit) allows for AI applications to see the world and act on it in real time.

As we continued to code there were several bugs that hindered our progression leading to us staying up all night and heading back to our hotel at about 7:00am where we continued to work.

At 10:30am we went off in search of a pickle ball course to record our demo. We first went to a park that was supposed to have a court but we never found it. So it seemed easiet to go back to CMU and use there tennis courts instead but there gate was locked... So we had to jump like a 10ft gate to get in and it was about 25F outside.

It was about 12:00pm now and we had to get the demo done by 1:00pm, and of course things start to go wrong. We had some issues with our project related to the network, Toni's computer overheated and wouldn't turn on, and I was having issues with the recording software. However we ended up submitting, although, given a little more time it would have been much better.

Judging came around at about 3:00pm, we showed it to the Overshoot team and general judges.

After that we were worn out and hadn't eaten for 12hrs. We went to get some food as we waited for the closing ceremony to come, we weren't really sure if we had done enough to place but it had been fun.

The closing ceremony came around, and they announced all the sponsor tracks and were coming to a close with the general tracks. The first general track was education which we were apart of, they called 3rd, then 2nd, but they said our name for 2nd? Suprised for a moment, we realized that they did call our name and laughed in surpise.

All in all, it was a really rewarding experience and just the beginning.

Check out our project

Final thoughts

My spring semester has just begun as well, I am going to try to make the most out of it, and continue to find challenges for myself. I might be attending another hackathon this upcoming weekend if there are not issues due to weather. Besides that I will be back soon.

Those who keep on going are always rewarded.

"A fool prays for an easier road, a wise man prays for stronger legs" - Chinese Proverb

Peace

I'm back.

I haven't exactly wrote here weekly like I said I would, but I am quite happy with what i've written in the past two entries. So maybe I won't aim for weekly, but around 3 per month.

Also the idea struck me yesterday of doing a monthly review, so on the first day of the new month, I will write a log to reflect on how it went.

School

School started pretty much right after I got back from NexHacks (check previous log for NexHacks story). I went to all my classes and got a feel for what my schedule will be like. I am also mentoring 2 teams with GDSC (Google Developer Student Club), one focused on machine learning and the other on frontend. Alongside that I met my team for the NASA L'SPACE Program which I am now a part of. So I am starting off the semester pretty hot which seems to be a recurring theme that I need to be careful with...

30 day cold plunge

A few days before the upcoming weekend (24-25th) I had the idea to do a cold plunge daily for 30 days and post it on instagram. I can't exactly remember why the idea came. It could have been from seeing another guy named Jordan on instagram complete 1000 days, or because I knew my ice bath would be icy with the incoming weather. However, I was not set on doing it, the thought of posting it was the main reason behind that, because it's so easy to get in your own head and worry about what others might think or say. Although, when feelings like this come to me, I usually feel obligated to do whatever it is I am hestitant on, which kept me considering it more and more. That upcoming weekend I was supposed to go to TAMUhack (A&M's hackathon) for my second hackathon of the year, but the storm did not let that happen. This was a big part of what made me start the challenge because I wasn't sure beforehand when I'd actually start, and this brought the perfect oppurtunity. I finally told myself I would, and now I am 9 days in. This might seem trivial, but it felt like a big step into helping me be me.

Find me on instagram @jordanjoelson to check it out.

Reflection of the month

Overall, it has been a great month with many improvements. With that being said, there were also areas that need work.

Areas to improve upon

• Adding stucture to my days.
• Staying consistent with working out even when all the additional commitments come.
• Waking up early (tied in with structure but need to get this dialed in and is one of my biggest goals).

Highlights of the month

• Winning at NexHacks
• Starting the 30 day cold plunge challenge
• Working on readez a speed reading app (will share more on it later)

While those are the bigger moments, the small moments that make up most of our time are what truly shape us. So I am glad that I have been making better decisions and choosing pain over comfort.

Breakfast before NexHacks begun + me and my dog Daisy

Conclusion

I am looking forward to working on the different areas I mentioned, and seeing what the future has in store.

You need to go after the things you want in life, if you ever hope to achieve them.

"Ships that wait for the perfect winds never sail."

Until next time

Yo

It has proven difficult to stay on top of these. It's been a busy start to the year, and it's weird to think how much actually happens over a few weeks, even though a lot of days seem insignificant. It seems that it is very easy to overlook all that is actually going on and compounding. Revealing why it is easy to lose sight of the short-term, but every second matters.

Multi-tasking armageddon

Since last time I joined HackUTD's marketing team, where I am responsible for the UI/UX designs of the various websites that we put together. HackUTD is UTD's flagship hackathon, and one of the largest university hackathons in North America. With this i've added to my heap of commitments for the semester, but I am excited about the work, and have met a bunch of cool people.

Moreover, i've been having my first few exams, and have had a pretty constant flow of homework.

Lastly, I've been having unusual desires to spend money on a growing wishlist. I find this concerning. Need to splurge.

30 day cold plunge

I have officially completed my 30 day cold plunge challenge🎉. It went by so fast, and has definetly been one for the books. The whole experience has had ups and downs. I'll start with the downs. First, since it's been around 70 degrees farenheit for the past 2 and a half weeks i've been having to buy ice leading to devasation in my reserve. Second, my organization throughout the challenge was not great, I had been coming up with the speaking points right before which produced good ideas, but cost a lot of time and spiked cortisol. Also for the editing, I used capcut on my phone, and to say the least I don't plan and using it ever again. The amount of delays I ran into from random bugs and templates being lost ridiculous. I'm moving to Davinci on my laptop for the future. Last and certainly the worst, is just having Instagram on your phone. Quality of life drops, screen-time spikes, and your IQ must be affected. Best phone advice I have is to delete social media, too chaotic, more of a distraction than anything else, and the value you do get from it is < the doom and despair. This is also because I've been back on my iPhone. I was previously using a dumb phone (AGM 9 peep photo), I will write more about it seperately. I miss it and need to go back even with its aggravating limitations.

On the bright side, this was a major step out of my comfort zone which I am extremely grateful for taking. It has challenged me, and helped me feel more confident in myself. Not sure what else to add but I would say the pros > cons in the end and I do believe this was worth it.

Despite my dislike for Social Media, I might consider doing another challenge. I will have to figure out a better pipeline though.

See the finale @jordanjoelson

Fun

On the 15th I went to Nexo Dallas Open with my Dad, which was an unexpected but fun outting. We watched the finals between the two best players in the US, Ben Shelton, and Taylor Fritz.

During one of the evenings while I was on campus, I got to check out the climbling club. It was fun meeting other students there, and also climbing some well-set routes.

I've been looking to fill my room with posters. So far I've put up a periodic table and several calculus formula sheets to try and engrain them in my brain. It's pretty shabby right now, and I plan on keeping it centered on education. Although, we will see how it transforms over time.

I've also been seeing videos on "cognitive yoga" which is a new term to me. It's basically exercises that boost your cognitive functions. This is right up my alley, as I already try to use my non-dominant hand for many tasks throughout the day. Some examples are cooking, eating, brushing my teeth, and using my phone. However the term encompasses all kinds of attention, visualization, and breathing techniques/exercises.

Goals

• Need to start working on trying something new everyday.
• More topic focused logs alongside my general ones.

Conclusion

I am running The Cowtown Marathon this upcoming Sunday. Let's just say I didn't exactly follow the training plan. One of my goals for 2026 as per my first log was to run a sub 4hr marathon. Don't want to speak negatively, but that won't be easy for this one.

"Excellence withers without an adversary. - Seneca"

Cya