Review of goals from last year:

  • ✅ finish LN 2k on Anki
    • This was really difficult. It took under 15 minutes each day and it was always so difficult.
    • It takes a few months to get any term into long-term memory. I finished the 2k definitions in October but I’m still hit with review every day.
    • I’m working on memorizing the Kanji pronunciations of everything and have ~800 terms on “New”.
    • This year I’ll continue reviewing and learning but the load is I hope much lighter.
    • I need to see the terms in context to really know them so this is really only a start.
    • Grammar… I don’t have it in me to self study anything more. I would be motivated if I found a group of friends though. Or a class.
  • ✅ learn any amount of Chinese
    • yeah… yeah
  • ❔ build an exercise habit
    • I think I was doing okay on this for most of the year with DDR.
    • It got kind of weird because I started taking Accutane for my skin and I think my eyes got extremely dry. Or something. Which made playing extended sessions rather uncomfortable. Rhythm games are such that you barely blink for the 2 minutes that the song is playing.
    • or i dunno maybe my dry eye is just from general screen overuse like i had during my junior year zoom uni.
    • I am not consistent with lifting because it requires going to the office which is always an emotional ordeal
  • ✅ get back on T
  • ✅ finish an updated ref sheet
    • it’s kind of a shitty ref missing lots of details but it’s better than nothing
  • ❌ finish my 1.5-years-late art trade
    • this is truly my shame. I finished the lines and flats and don’t know how I want to shade it.
  • ❌ fully set up my NAS
  • ✅ fix tax issues

I pretty much didn’t accomplish anything on the “things I want to happen but aren’t a priority” list.

Outcome-based things I wanted to happen:

  • ❔ clear skin
    • I went to the derm (2 month wait time) and they told me accutane is complicated and only used as a last resort for severe acne. they prescribed me bactrim which i had an allergic reaction to (I had a fever for 4 days and a full body rash).
    • I decided I did not want to wait the 2 months to go back to the derm for another antibiotic so I went for an online prescriber who gave me Accutane without any fuss. It was cheaper too. I’m only about 3.5 months in so it’s not clear yet. Honestly I could write a whole blog post about all the weird side effects but one could just as easily Google it.
    • well i’ll be finishing that course in the next year and then we’ll see what happens.
  • ✅ get promoted
  • ✅ SEXY GIRLFRIEND
  • ❔ become closer to existing friends
    • Since I started working, I’ve been talking less with my online friends.
    • Multiple weird friend situations happened this year….. oh well.
    • Reconnected with a few people from high school.
    • I continue to meet people locally. So overall I guess it’s alright?

Things I did that I didn’t write in any list:

  • learned very basic shuffling specifically to play dancerush (but it’s also a party trick now)
  • went to norway with havila for vacation and saw the northern lights and fjords!
  • ~21% return on my investments, matches vtwax (https://vtwaxandchill.com/)
  • replaced my iphone se 2020 battery without majorly screwing anything up
  • changed teams at work, which also means a different office location

Things for the coming year:

  • related to moving out
    • get rid of old stuff
    • learn to cook more things for real?
    • clean better?
  • finish the 2.5 years late art trade. my shame.
  • continue anki
  • The Project
  • exercise
    • im specifically more interested in lifting because i think the extra strength would be good for my posture and general health. ddr is good for a start but long term i probably want more full body strength.
    • i gotta make a real plan for this. but what?
    • i find this a lot more bearable with friends. but who?
  • urgh I still don’t have a great relationship with social media and being glued to my devices. how can I? everything’s there. but I hope and pray that I’ll figure something out.

Some doubts:

  • i’d say my head is in the clouds a lot, i’m kind of spacey. could be a side effect of medication or i’m just always like this, i can’t really tell.
  • i still suck at wfh, i get distracted a lot. I really hope that the new team is more interesting and i’ll be motivated to procrastinate less if I actually like the nature of the job. It seems like procrastination is a common thing among the old team because it’s just a job for all of us.
  • when my sister is home, she and my mom do most of the food prep and groceries. I’m thinking about and doing my own stuff most of the time. People say how you treat your parents predicts your future life with your partner and I really don’t want to be one of those guys whose gf takes the role of a mother too. OTOH, all my friends say they are lazier when they’re at home. So. maybe it’s fine if I just have enough conviction to not be a lazy bum. it’s hard to 看到就做到 because im so spacey.
  • I need space and i’m a little apprehensive about that. It was fine last summer when I shared a room with someone because I would hide out at the office for 12 hours at a time 4 out of the 7 days of the week. Also I don’t like drawing or practicing music with people around because I feel self conscious.
  • The Project. I’ve wanted to make merch but I’m afraid all the work will be for nothing and not enough people will be interested in it or something. It’s not trivial to get samples and pre-calculate costs and design everything and do whatever social media promoting that people do. Honestly it’s overwhelming to think about so I just haven’t. But it’s still a thing I want to do. I’m reminded of the love story of j alfred prufrock – “Do I dare disturb the universe?” And so he lives his life plagued by indecisiveness. maybe as time goes on i become timid.
  • a lot of things happened quickly in Q4 2024 and i havent processed it all, maybe because of that damn phone. things are going so fast (or they aren’t, and i’m just too inefficient to keep up).
  • In James Clear’s Atomic Habits, he mentions that if you get 1% better each day then it compounds to 37% better after a year. I think this is mostly bs because how can you quantitatively measure what is 1%? The truth is that our brain capacity is limited. We can only additively improve each day instead of multiplicatively.
  • i really hate that FREEDOM basically means the burden is all on the self. it’s difficult to arrange and keep track of…. everything.
  • it seems to be better to leverage the power of “something is in the air” (basically, community vibes and semi peer pressure) to get stuff done rather than trying to do things on my own. and of course it’s a self directed effort again to make such a thing happen.

It’s gonna be a busy Q1 and I’m nervous. I should probably focus on the move and not think about the rest of it for now or my head is going to explode.