Here we are at the start of a new year! But… if you read the review from last year, the review for this year is going to be depressingly familiar. I don’t think I feel as frustrated with myself as I did a year ago, but I certainly feel just as disappointed, if not more so. I was hopeful that moving to a new city would force some good changes, and there were some, but they came with just as many bad changes. Of course, as always, I will expound on these at length below.
2019 in Summary
The only tweak to the previous format will be in this section. I normally cover a bunch of things in a random order here, so just to make it more clear where things are, I’m going to split these up into some broad categories: events, which includes big life changes and trips; work, which includes career stuff as well as personal projects; home, which includes social life and entertainment; and health, which is pretty self explanatory.
Events
To get the big one out of the way, I got a new job and we moved to New York City, specifically Queens. I wrote several posts during the first half of the year talking about my experiences and thoughts about our new home, but in summary I still love the overall decision. I do miss the familiarity of Seattle at times, mostly not getting to see our best friends and family all the time, but everything else about living here has been better for both of us. The only thing we haven’t been great about is exploring, so that’s going to be a goal for the coming year.
Another big event that happened shortly after we moved is that the album I recorded last year got released. I could not be more proud of what we made. I love it with my whole heart and have listened to it regularly the entire year. I even use Kindness as my wake up alarm because it’s a nice, upbeat way to get going in the morning. Like most albums, it was most popular during the first month after release, but it has been consistently played (streamed) since then. Not a lot compared to most artists I’m sure, but it’s enough that I’m convinced it’s not just us band members listening to it.
In terms of trips we went on, almost all of them were related to PAX. Went to San Antonio in January like we have the last few years. Went to Boston for the first time, though didn’t get to see much of the city due to the convention. Went back to Seattle for a long Labor Day weekend. And finished off the year a few weeks ago with a return to Philadelphia. That last one ended up being pretty terrible though because we were both sick the whole time and went home early.
The only non-PAX, non-holiday trip was the week we spent in Ireland courtesy of my family. A couple of days were spent in Dublin, which my wife and I both love dearly, and the rest were spent on the northern coast. We stayed in a little house in what can only be called a village, so it was about as different from our new home as you can get without being farmland. It was a good time though, getting to see a culture in that way, with plenty of beautiful scenery to see.
Work
My job this year has been… difficult. It is by no means the worst job I’ve had, in fact I would say that it ranks second behind Amazon (when taken as a whole). However, it has given me a lot more stress than it deserves. The work itself is all fine and good, plenty of consistent challenge with reasonable rewards. The culture, though, is quite toxic, and it has worn on me all year. It makes it hard to be motivated to want to do the good work that I’ve become known for. The big plus is that, since I do such good work, I have no concerns about where I stand in the company. But it would be nice if everyone else could just get along better, then I wouldn’t be vented at all the time, bringing my attitude down.
As far as personal projects went, well, there weren’t any really. All of my free, creative time went towards the weekly posts I did for most of the year. But even after I stopped doing that, I didn’t end up shifting towards using that time for other pursuits. I did get more ideas for things I want to do during that time, but ideas don’t equal results. So, we’ll see if that gets better in the coming year or not.
Home
At this point, I really have to thank myself for creating a good group of east coast friends before we moved, since I think we would be struggling a lot more if we didn’t have that. Outside of them, we basically only knew one person in NYC before moving, so we would’ve had to put in a lot more effort to create a new friend group, which is not easy for us. So with a good group already there, our social life has been pretty good. The great thing about it is that we all live in Queens, so getting together is very easy and can happen on any day we want to. It feels like seven years ago, at the height of our Capitol Hill friend group. I know we can still do better here since a lot of the time this year we missed out on things due to stress and illness.
As far as enjoying my free time, I think it was better than the previous year, but I still spent far too much time on unrewarding things. Again, a lot of this was stress related, but I was able to make some adjustments later in the year that helped me focus more, so if I take that into the next year, I’m sure my time will be better spent.
Health
In short, my overall health continues to decline, and I feel worse than I ever have (at least as far as memory serves). My status a year ago is basically the same as it is now. Diet has not improved, it’s actually gotten worse now that we live in the world of food delivery. I have exercised maybe 20 times the whole year, which isn’t enough progress to get anything going. I’m still tired all the time, and I get headaches from it on a nearly daily basis. So yeah, things aren’t great.
I’m going to put at least some of the blame for this on my job. As I’ve already mentioned, the stress feeds into the cycle of being tired all the time so bad decisions get made in the evenings when I should be exercising and cooking dinners. In addition to that, I went many years where I had the flexibility to get to work fairly late in the morning. As long as I put the time in, it didn’t really matter when I was there. Now I’m in a job that forces the 9-5, and my body is just not built for getting up that early. You would think I would’ve adjusted after a year, but no, the amount of time sleeping doesn’t matter at all. It’s only the time I wake up that matters, and my body hates getting up at 7:00 and earlier. Maybe at some point I will be able to convince my superiors that I’m more valuable getting into the office later so that I can get the rest I need, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
This really needs to be the highest priority for me in the coming year, or I’m going to eventually end up in a situation that I can’t recover from.
Favorite Games
Final Fantasy XV - I really didn’t expect to like this game as much as I did. I love the series as a whole, but when it came out I wasn’t hearing much from others that got me particularly interested. Most people were positive on it, but I couldn’t understand why based on what they actually said about it. I totally get it now. Yes, it definitely has a lot of flaws and the moment to moment isn’t as fun as other entries in the series. But I legitimately didn’t want the game to end because I had gotten so attached to the main characters, which has never really happened before in those games. Even now I consider going through it again, but I know that there is so much more to play that I shouldn’t. A full review for this will be coming eventually.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening - This is a little bit of a cop out since it’s just a remake of a game I already loved when I was a kid, but it’s a fantastic remake and worth every minute I put into it. It has a lot of quality-of-life improvements allowed by the console, the graphics are beautiful, and it’s a short enough game that I would have no problem just playing through it again when I have a free weekend.
Stardew Valley - Typically I only put games on here that I’ve finished during the year, so this wouldn’t normally count since I haven’t finished it. But it’s a game that has no actual end goal, so I’m going to let it slide this time. Again, I didn’t expect to like this game as much as I do. I’ve never played any games in this genre, like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon, so I can’t compare it to those, but I really dig this game. It really comes down to a couple things. One, lots of collections to complete, which appeals greatly to my completionist nature. Two, it’s fundamentally a game about experimenting and maximizing efficiency, which appeals to my engineering side as well. It’s relaxing and easy to play while listening to other things, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for the last month. So, it definitely fits under favorites.
As a short addendum, I do want to call out Borderlands 3 and Untitled Goose Game as being two great experiences I had with my wife this year. I personally don’t find myself wanting to go back to those games much right now, so they aren’t favorites, but playing them with her made them better than they would’ve been alone.
Favorite Movies/TV Shows
Bad Times at the El Royale - First watched this on one of the many flights at the beginning of the year during the move, and it was so good that I made my wife watch it as well. Basically the same thing that happened with Mission Impossible: Fallout last year. It’s just a fun romp of a movie with tons of twists and dynamic characters. Would gladly watch again and again.
Annihilation - Another flight movie, getting to catch up on something I’ve wanted to see for a while. Overall, I didn’t find anything particularly novel about the film, it was actually kinda boring in retrospect. But the visuals really stuck with me for a long time, so I’m going to give it a nod just for that alone.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - I feel like I don’t really need to add anything more onto this that hasn’t been said already. While I don’t think I love it as much as most people did, I have to recognize it for the artistic achievement it is, as it visually blew me away. I might’ve seen it differently if my expectations hadn’t gotten so high with all the praise it got, but still absolutely one of the best movies I saw this year.
Knives Out - This is my favorite movie of the year, by quite a big margin. Like Bad Times, it is a ridiculously fun romp, and it comes out ahead of that one by also being very smart in the story it tells and the way it tells it. Great mystery, lots of humor, polarizing characters, fantastic performances across the board. It also came as the biggest surprise since I didn’t really know anything about it until reviews started coming out, and those convinced me it was worth seeking out. And I’m super glad I did.
Favorite Books
Alexander Hamilton - It was sadly another year of not enjoying many books I read, but this did stand out as the only audiobook I listened to this year that I wanted to keep going with. I’ve probably mentioned before that I’m a big fan of the musical inspired by this book, and it is definitely an interesting book. Probably the most interesting aspect isn’t so much about the man himself, but about how little things have seemed to change when it comes to politics. I considered writing a post about it this year, but I couldn’t quite find the right frame to do it with, so decided not to. In any case, a good read.
Hyperspace - I guess if I had to choose a book I actually read with my eyes, this one was the most interesting to me. I did write a post about Cosmos as well, and I liked that well enough, but this book had a lot more stuff that was new to me, so that brought it up to the front. I do wish the book had more actual science in it, most of the concepts are explained and we are told that there are proofs and stuff, but those are never shown or explained. Yes, it is written for a wider audience, but I didn’t like how hand-wavey it was about how they know they’re correct. It was still enough to keep me engaged though, so that’s something.
Goals
As usual, I will have a lot to say here, but before I get into this coming year, a quick recap of last year’s goals. I made them pretty specific with subgoals to flesh out my exact plan for each, so it’ll be easy to assess exactly where I got. Though, if you’ve read my posts across the year, you already know how they went.
Run a Half-Marathon in Under 2 Hours - Super ambitious, super failure. As I already mentioned, my health has only gotten worse this year, so there was no way this was going to happen in light of that. Even with the adjustment I made mid-year, I’m just not exercising at all. More on that later.
Publish a Post Every Week - I got a lot further with this than I expected. Sadly I decided to give up in August, so I can’t say I succeeded here, but I did better than I ever have with similar attempts. I definitely have a lot of respect for those who can maintain that kind of pace (though to be fair, most people who do write for a living). The main reason I quit was due to lack of topics, but I also wanted to use that time for other things. Overall a good attempt, but not enough reward for the work I put in.
Listen to 200 New Albums - I honestly have no idea how far I got with this, but probably somewhere in the 60 range. Fundamentally, the idea didn’t align with how I tend to take in new music. I have a giant list of albums that I want to listen to, but I never want to do it because that’s not how I approach music. It tends to be more natural where I hear a song somewhere else, and if it triggers my brain then I will seek it out. But if I just go into an album cold, I’m not likely to get into it much. Sometimes I do find gems in this more artificial way, but it’s rare. The side effect of removing distractions while working didn’t really work either, so that contributed as well to not setting aside time to listen to new things.
Make a Focusing/Quitting Habit - This is the first goal I abandoned, for the sole reason that it just didn’t work at all the way I thought it would. I thought recording stuff and making things more granular would help, but it ended up just adding more busywork that took time away from doing the actual things. So I stopped. An unexpected side effect of this failure is that I’m not even using Jira to track things anymore after six years of constant use. I finally realized that it was taking 10 steps in Jira to do the same thing I can do in 2 steps using Evernote, so I’m phasing it out until I have a real need for it (like a project).
As I think back on all the different approaches I’ve tried to be more productive and all that, it’s difficult to really know what has worked better than others. There are so many approaches you can have. You can try to schedule everything you do. You can try to make very specific goals. You can try to use deadlines. You can try to build habits instead of specific goals. You can try to offload the whole burden onto external systems to keep you in line.
I have tried all of these in one way or another, but they all blend together at some point so I can’t point to one way as better than others. Scheduling works pretty well until you have to deviate from it, and it requires a lot of upkeep. Specific goals works pretty well until life makes it such that you can’t do them, or you stop wanting to do them (see this year). Habits works pretty well until you realize there are no heuristics on if you’re doing well or not. I do know that deadlines really don’t work for me, at least in my personal life. They attach too much stress for things that are supposed to be fun, so I will leave deadlines for my paid work.
The specific goals attempt this past year did actually work for quite a while, so it’s definitely not a bad approach. The thing is, I don’t know if it’s a good fit for what I really want to do, which is to have time for bigger projects that can take a year or more to do. With things like that, I find that it has been more effective to just devote time to them and eventually something pops out. So the obvious answer there is to take a more scheduling approach.
Aside from missing the goals I set this year, the other bad trend I noticed is that I’ve been isolating myself too much. This wasn’t so bad in our old place because my computer was in the main room where my wife was also, but in our new place my computer is in a separate room. It’s a good thing when I want to have time to myself to focus and such, but I’ve been taking it too far and kind of locking myself away. In the coming year, I want to be more intentional with the time I spend on the computer, and default to being more social.
Now, with all of that said, I have a few things I want to work on this year, so I’m going to mark them as goals, though I’m not going to go as specific as I did last year. That means no hard criteria. The real goal with these is to restructure my life/schedule to accommodate them.
Health Comes First
I’ve started and stalled on getting my health back in order multiple times this year as I slowly got worse and worse. It’s not like it’s a mystery, I can feel it in small ways every single day. Yet as with most things, it is simply easier to push it off and say I’ll do better tomorrow.
The steps to do this are basically the same as what I said last year. As far as diet goes, the main thing is to get back to cooking again and stop ordering in all the time. Doing that alone will go a long way, in addition to cutting back on the carbs. Exercising 3-4 times a week is also a must. I feel so much better when I get even two workouts in during a week. Being less sedentary will also help with feeling better. More standing desk, more going outside on days when I’m not commuting, more breaks when I am sitting for long periods of time.
I was pretty clear last year about how bad I felt all the time, and I’ve gained 15 pounds since then, none of it muscle. So yeah, I’m not feeling any better. This has to be my main focus for the year. Working and having fun are great, but both become a lot harder to do when your body is constantly crashing.
Less Isolation
I just mentioned this as being something I think needs to happen. When I say less isolation, I’m specifically talking about my backroom time, mostly using the computer. It is effectively the great distraction machine. Of course I do still use it for good things, like writing this post, but it is just too easy to use it to waste away entire days where nothing gets done.
Staying out of the backroom will result in multiple good things. One, more chores will get done since procrastination will be harder. Two, more quality time with my wife. Three, with my options more limited, I will be forced to spend my time on more rewarding things. Less Youtube nonsense, more movies and TV (you could argue those are also not rewarding, but I personally think real art is better than Youtube junk). Less social media, more reading books. Less playing perpetual games, more playing new games.
Of course I will still use the backroom for times when I do need it, but it should be with a time limit or some other plan in place. So far I’ve been using the time in the morning before work pretty effectively in this regard, I just need to apply the same tactics to evenings and weekends.
Schedule Weekly Blocks
The purpose of this goal is to ensure some time each week is set aside to work on those longer projects I mentioned. I’ve tried scheduling my whole week in the past, but that tends to fall apart very quickly as unexpected things get thrown into the mix, or things end up taking longer than I expect. It also results in never having enough time to split appropriately between all the different things I want to do.
So the approach here is going to be a little different. The idea is to make sure I have enough hours somewhere in a given week to do X. It can all be in one block or split up among different days depending on what’s going on that week. I already know that a good chunk of my free time has to be spent on exercising, cooking, cleaning, etc. So if I want to write a post like this one, I know I need around 3 hours of time to do that. I can do it all in one go on a Saturday morning, or I can find an hour here and there on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
Of course the difficulty is always going to be deciding what to do with those hours I carve out, so priorities are still important. Ideally most of this time will be spent on creative endeavors, which includes post writing, but I should be able to also find time for tackling things I’ve been putting off for a long time that are not creative.
Accept and Push Forward
There are a lot of ways to express this, but none of them fully fit, so I’m going with accept and push forward. Essentially, this is telling myself to stop dwelling on things so much and just keep moving. Obviously some amount of self-reflection is necessary to know where I stand on things, but I get locked up far too often and I stall for hours or days on things that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
I suppose it comes from having an analytical mind. You turn things over in your head a lot because you want to come up with the best solution, but often times you just need to pick something and go. This comes up a lot when I beat myself up over not finishing something I wanted to, or when I can’t think of what to do next after completing something. It pains me even now to think of just how much time I’ve wasted doing nothing because of the constant indecision and regret over the indecision.
Yes, I think it is absolutely important to have those times when you can do nothing and be okay with that. But like anything else, it should be intentional and not the default state. I feel a lot better on a daily basis if I feel I’m using my full time, even if it’s not used as effectively as possible. I always have to remind myself that any progress is still progress. Stop thinking about it and just pick something!
Here’s to 2020
Hard to believe that another decade is here now. There are certainly a lot of things I’m proud of that I’ve been able to do in the last decade, but I can’t help but feel like my peak was a while ago. So, I want to get back to feeling like I’m really living my best life. Things can never be perfect, but I can at least make sure that the positives outweigh the negatives, and I’m not there right now. Haven’t been for a few years.
So here’s to 2020 and a new decade. It’s up to me to make it the best it can be.