As I’ve gotten older, it’s been getting harder and harder to see how I’m “better” (whatever that means) than I was a year ago. And in fact, in some ways, a lot of the effort I have to put into myself nowadays is just so I can stop the inevitable decline of, for example, my body.

Last December, I put forth the following goals, vaguely in priority order:

Career:

(1) Publish Paper

(1) PhD

(300) Read Paper

General Health:

(100) Run Miles

(12) Learn minutes of dance

(100) Go Climbing

(5) Climb V5

(1) Climb V6

Vanity:

(200) Skincare

(12) Lose pounds: starting pt: 128.0

(2) get abs

Self-enrichment:

(12) Read books

(24) mek art/3D model

The completion of the first two (publish/get PhD) was largely a foregone conclusion, but they were actually the only things I needed to do for the year to be a good year. To be honest, there were many points at which I thought these might be impossible for me. The weeks right before my defense were incredibly low points for me.

In terms of the others, I think I just wanted a sort of a progress bar for various goals I wanted to set for myself.

re:General Health - I was hoping to get more into exercising this year. Honestly this was one thing that I’d dropped pretty badly over the pandemic. (Shortly before the pandemic, I ran my second half-marathon, but as soon as the pandemic hit, I almost didn’t go outside). 2020 was pretty bad, but I was quarantining with quite a few friends, so it wasn’t too bad. At the beginning of 2021, I was at a point where some days I walked around the block and celebrated it. 2022 wasn’t quite so bad, but I was definitely overoptimistic about some of my fitness goals XD.

re:Vanity - What can I say, I guess I A) am just not really as vain as I needed to be B) enjoy food way too much XD. I didn’t manage to lose any weight or gain abs, but I do think my relationship with food is much better than it was before. You’ll see in the chart that I’ve recorded achieving “half an ab” - I did complete a 3 week ab workout course and did kind of achieve a significant amount of hardness in the midsection.

re:Self Enrichment - I do like reading, although it puts me in a very strange headspace that it takes a long time to remove myself from. I find that to be somewhat uncomfortable, which is why this goal was only 12. I made a lot more art than I was expecting to. They aren’t very finished pieces, as was the intention when I wrote down 12, but I was able to put onto paper just a bit of what I saw in the world, which I enjoyed a lot. I made 2 complete 3D models this year - modeled, printed, sanded, glued, primed, and painted. Each one was a longer process than I anticipated. (In fact, I was working on the valorant gun basically all year)

Overall, one of the things that wasn't on the list that I spent a lot of time on and is generally very important to me is social relationships. I'm not a very extroverted person, but I love hanging around people :<. I think I did a good job of learning how to be more comfortable (and make others more comfortable!) and I really pushed myself to flake less lmfao.

Annual Photo Recap

I got engaged!!! <3

Feeling super lucky XDDDDD.