2024
Published on Jan 17, 2024
Well, wouldn’t you know it, I actually managed to publish my big, year-ending GOTY list on time this year, setting me up for a punctual and productive year of blogging, and wham: I got covid.
So instead of spending the first week of the year after the holidays getting set up for the year ahead and doing some work on hobbies before actual work started back up, I spent the week sleeping on an air mattress in our spare room in an (ultimately futile) effort to try and avoid my girlfriend’s covid, and eventually convalescing my way through my own exciting bout of the sequel to SARS.
Luckily, I’m starting to feel better now, and work is still ramping up slowly, so I’ve got some time to blog!
I haven’t done one of these posts super regularly, but I’m feeling like doing one now! So join me in looking back and seeing if 2023 went according to plan, and setting up some plans for 2024!
In 2023, I wanted to…
Work on work discipline ✅
In 2022, I felt like I was a little too lax in terms of giving my work all of the effort and attention it deserved. I’ve spent the past 3–4 years building up a freelance editing career from the absolute zero of 2020, so it’s only natural that certain skills would need developing, especially working full-time freelance for the first time in my career. In 2023, I did a lot of work on making myself focus, but I also feel like it sort of happened naturally, as my work really picked up last year, and I started seeing a steady stream of challenging projects that sort of snapped me into place in terms of discipline. I would call this one a success!
Watch a movie every week ❌
For every success, there must also be a failure. Or at least, that’s what I’ll tell myself at several points throughout this post. Not only did I not watch a movie every week last year, I barely watched any movies at all. I’m kind of in a weird place with movies and visual media in general. It’s been hard for me to find the right time and space to watch something outside of whatever I’m watching with my girlfriend at dinner. Definitely want to take another swing at this one this year.
Stream on Twitch ❌
Another failure. Every once in a while I get it in my head that it would be a lot of fun to stream more games and try to amass some kind of following or community there. In practice, I often just don’t enjoy the act of streaming, whether folks are watching or not, and I think it might be time to give up on this dream. But who knows, never say never.
Move my shelves ✅
I’d left a bunch of shelves of my stuff still cluttering the walls of the room that was previously my bedroom, which became my girlfriend’s art studio when she moved in in 2021. Two years later, I finally moved them (and all of my stuff) into my office space!
Make homemade Pop-Tarts ❌
This was less an overarching resolution, and more of a thing we wanted to do, but so was the shelf thing, and I make the rules here. I guess this could also represent a desire to do more baking of a certain kind. We didn’t end up making pop-tarts or, I think, having much of a baking breakthrough, despite buying my girlfriend a stand mixer for her birthday, because we had a gas leak at the beginning of last year, which led to our gas being out for an entire month. That kind of put a damper on our excitement, and then we just got busy and didn’t make it a priority.
Write more, smaller blogs ❌
I don’t have to tell you this didn’t happen.
Write things down ✅
I don’t remember exactly what I was going for with this one, I write things down all the time. I have a blog, I journal in my Hobonichi Techo, what more could I want? That said, I have started using my phone’s Notes app a lot more for random thoughts and ideas, as well as just cracking open Notepad on PC. It really helps me stay in my thoughts rather than having to load up Notion and try to decide how to organize and format an idea before ever getting it down.
Practice Japanese ✅❌
Partial points for this one, I guess. I started strong again, but fell off as I got busy. I’ve had a really hard time keeping any kind of consistency in my studies. I think to a degree there’s just no substitute for taking a course in school. But I did sign up for a lifetime membership to WaniKani, a great website for learning kanji, and I haven’t lost any of my existing knowledge of hiragana or katakana, which I still enjoy struggling my way through whenever a bag of Japanese snacks or something similar crosses my path.
That’s my year in review! There was a lot of failure! But that’s to be expected when setting out to try to do things. You’re not going to be able to do everything. Sometimes, you won’t be able to do anything! The year has its own plans, and it’s not going to share them with you!
Alright then, let’s look forward with this year’s list.
In 2024, I want to…
- Watch more movies.
- Work on the apartment (new furniture).
- Enjoy the moment more (journey v. destination).
- Practice Japanese.
- Work on imposter syndrome/second-guessing self.
- Write more, smaller blogs.
- Create art.
- Make friends/community.
- Finish transferring old family video tapes.
- Office space refresh???
There’s a lot I want to tackle this year! Some repeats as well as some newcomers! You’ll just have to wait until next January to see how it all turns out.
See you then!