Another year has gone by, which means it’s time for me to dust off my writing hat again. 2023 was pretty chaotic, but through that chaos I’ve learned some things about myself and also experienced some change in my life perspectives. As an overview, I think this year I’ve really started to find my rhythm and figured out what works and doesn’t work for me.
Overview
Events wise, so much happened this year it’s hard to recap in one go. I take pictures pretty regularly so I have lots to go by if I wanted to actually recollect what happened; For my writing specifically, I won’t go into details.
It didn’t end up being a big travel year for me, I just did my routine trip to Toronto to see friends and a small Seattle trip during the summer, outside of that I mostly stayed put in Vancouver. I got to see Twice in Seattle though, so that was a lot of fun! I’m planning to travel more again in 2024, starting with a Toronto/Montreal trip that my family is planning so we’re off to a good start already!
Even though there wasn’t much traveling, I still did a lot this year - made many new friends and tried out a lot of new things. Some noticable things include hosting a few people for a cafe afternoon, cooking a seven course meal, and running many new different routes!! We also moved to a new place this year, so there was a lot of chaos and adjustment for that as well.
Work
In terms of work, I was getting quite comfortable and had a rountine going from the start towards the middle of the year. In the autumn, I was switched to a different team at work which is much faster paced than before. It took a lot of adjusting to actually have to work during work hours, but it was definitely a breath of fresh air after being on the same project for close to three years.
Though I’m learning a lot on my new team, it definitely took a lot of energy to have to start from scratch learning new tools and technologies and it ate a bit into the energy I had outside of work. I try my best to maintain a good work-life balance, but the balance has definitely shifted a bit. I’m not overworking or doing any overtime, but that extra energy after work means a lot in terms of having strength to work on my own projects or to meet up with friends. It’s deifnitely something that I’m hoping will become more balanced as I spend more time on the new team.
Projects
The busy-ness definitely did come at the cost of time though, I had much less time to work on my own projects this year. I wasn’t able to draw as much this year, and I didn’t really finish many of my side projects either.
The only project I actually finished was my ray tracer that I was writing in rust; I consider this kind of a half project though, as I was just following a book and there wasn’t too much critical thinking involved in the project.
I did get to work on my programming language as well as some game projects throughout the year. I actually completed quite a few game jam games, but I wouldn’t consider any of them serious projects since they’re all tiny projects that I complete in a single weekend using janky half-assed javascript code.
Towards the end of the year, I purchased an art book with a bunch of project ideas for creature designs. I’m going to make it a goal to try to get through this book in 2024, though that boils down to less than 10 days per project which I’m not sure I can keep up with realistically. Regardless, I’ll try my best and hopefully get somewhere with it!
Reflections
Overall, this year kind of felt like a vacation year (even though I didn’t go on vacation). I got to relax a lot and let go of my projects for a bit while I’m having fun and enjoying myself. It felt like somewhat of a much needed break, as so much of my life before has had a big focus on being productive and getting involved in hustle culture. It was nice to take a step back and focus on things that are truly important in my life.
One thing I’m especially “proud” of was starting to actually play more games again; There was a point where I couldn’t put down my projects to relax because I felt such pressure to just keep going otherwise I would never “make it”. I picked up pokemon towards the end of last year, and this year I started playing zelda as well as getting back into guild wars and TFT. Being able to enjoy games again has been amazing for not just my project fatigue but also my mental health!
I was also a bit more free with my spending this year, but not in a bad way at all. Growing up, and especially when I was in university, I always tried to save as much money as possible so I’d often cook even if I had no energy to. That mentally has carried over to my life now, even though I am definitely earning enough money to eat out and get delivery more than once in a while. I was able to break out of that shell a bit and enjoy my money some more this year while still saving money at the end of each month, which I’m very proud of myself for! Mentally, it’s definitely taking me a bit to adjust since I feel slightly guilty every time I spend money like that, but at the end of the day the point of making money is to spend it, right?
Goals
Looking at last years goals, I’ve hit almost none of them except maybe the one about writing something with my own programming language. However, I was going in with the mindset that my goals are just guidelines and don’t have concrete deadlines, and with that in mind I think they were very helpful in guiding me towards how to spend my time.
This year, I’ll keep the same goal structure as before since it worked pretty well, just with a few adjustments to reflect the changes that have happened in my life. For example, I’ve come to terms that I don’t have enough time to spend on bouldering to really progress fast enough, so I’m ok with it just being a social thing to hang out with people rather than actually improving. With that said, here are my rough goals for the year:
- Run a sub 4 hour marathon
- Make a game (Actually finish it, don’t ditch it halfway)
- Finish creature design book projects
- Basic Korean conversation skills
- Finish 2 sketchbooks
- Implement neural networks in my own programming language
- Start my online sticker shop
- Host cafes and dinner parties!!
- Finish a game
Once again, I’m completely fine with these goals not being met. Their purpose as a guideline has been helpful enough in keeping my focus, and I’m more than happy if my life just continues exactly as it is now. Hopefully, I’ll travel more this year and be able to continue pushing my balance between relaxing and working on my projects. Hope 2024 turns out ot be a good year!!