2022 Year Review
There goes 2022, and hello 2023! So, uhm, could someone remind me how this works? I just write whatever comes to mind? Alright then.
Strandedness
After surviving the craziness of 2022, it’s finally starting to hit me that life is really quite short. Not because we don’t get enough time to fully experience life, but because we don’t have time to deal with the nonsense going around us. Life is too short for that bullshit.
Memories
This year, I’m determined to preserve the memorable moments in life, starting with the simple act of keeping a diary. I’ve also been working on digitizing most of the old tape recordings and photos etc. around the house, and save them in more durable storage.
It’s easy to keep fragments of the things that fuel you and treasure that forever. In the end, you end up with this pocket time machine that can take you back to any moment in your life. Wouldn’t that be the greatest gift to yourself, I wonder.
Socializing
Whether it’s talking to complete strangers online, or gathering with friends IRL. It feels good to socialize. A small discord server where most of the active members know you and are just looking to have a good time seems like the perfect balance. I think that’s as close as we’ll get to pubs, where people have been gathering for centuries.
Picking up interpersonal skills over time is undoubtably very important to anyone trying to get stable grounds. In that sense, 2022 had been going strong.
Coding
I drafted multiple paragraphs of different projects that I did in 2022, before deleting all that from this post.
Things you did in the past is already history. So leave them behind, and bring a piece of it with you. What truly matters is the piece that stuck with you.
- I continued being a fullstack developer, who seeks the beauty and craftsmanship in code.
COVID
I finally caught COVID for the first time about 3 weeks ago, and that totally knocked me out. The fever died out in about 18 hours, but the constant drowsiness and fatigue kept dragging me down for at least 10 days. That’s 10 whole days of doing pretty much nothing, and going back to the primitive eat, light exercise, sleep, repeat cycle. Now that I finally recovered, I’m really appreciating the time that I can live a normal life and do stuff. I hope that can encourage me to keep a healthy lifestyle for the rest of my life.
Music
Last year, I put together a playlist of songs that I listened to throughout the year that I wanted to share. I felt like you can really get to know someone after listening to their music. This year I did the same thing, and I hope that becomes the tradition for my yearly reviews.
Well, here comes the sad part. Last year’s playlist contained 35 songs, 2 of which are now removed from Spotify. This is why you should be in control of your own media.
Also, Spotify has the worst iframe embed, ever. But what am I gonna do? Pirate all of them and write my own music player? If I were to do that, I will at least pay the smaller artists, no worries.
New year’s resolutions
This year is going to be a big one. The stars align, and brings me a new set of challenges and experiences to live on for. (This is strictly due to personal circumstances and not related to religion or astrology in any way)
Lifestyle
Living healthily is the absolute foundation of anything. It must come before anything else.
- Eat. Learn to cook a couple of dishes in a variety of cuisines. Although cooking haven’t been a true passion of mine, I always have a heart for it. I will be sharing more info if I ended up fulfilling this wish.
- Workout. The COVID lockdown forced all gyms to close shop for a few months, and jogging alone doesn’t seem to be enough to keep me in good shape.
- Sleep. COVID have completely wrecked my sleeping schedule, and I’m still recovering from that. I can’t stress enough how crucial a regular sleeping schedule is.
Art
- Try out music production.
- Learn blender. Being a person who draws like 3-year-olds, I’ve pretty much given up on traditional art. But I always felt like I still have a chance in 3D. With the maturity of Geometry Nodes in 2022, I think 3d has become THE systematic way of creating “art” for us normies, if you get what I mean.
Tech
I had the chance to play with 2 new languages in 2022, Linux Assembly and Haskell. Weird choices on my end, but still had a blast with both. I also tried out Redis, and it lived up to its reputation.
Experimenting with different languages and technologies have helped me gain just enough experience to know when it’s appropriate to use them. Instead of searching for “the best language for building …”, I have first-hand experiences to know exactly what I need. This has been extremely helpful in the past, and will be the same in the future.
- I will be continuing the pursuit of new toys in 2023.
Travel & People
2023 will be the year of travel for me. I will be traveling between places, and I do not wish to do it all alone. Meeting new, interesting individuals is a top priority, and if I can find like-minded people to join me on my journey, that’s an added bonus.
Writing
I wrote 12 posts here in 2022 on Skyfalls’ Hideout, which will soon be rebranded to something even cringier. Here’s a sneak peek:
I came to the realization that blogging is already a niche, and since I’m doing it on my personal site, it becomes my personal niche. Thanks to that, I can do whatever I want here.
In 2023, I want to write more about my personal experiences, thoughts, and emotions.
Let 2020 be
I am looking forward to the day when I can finally stop responding with “2020” reflexively when asked what year it is. Yeah, I still do that, even today.