2023 Recap

Today is 2024.04.22. I'm 4 months late, but better late than never!!!

This year was really a banger. Really kinda insane how much happened, let's just get straight into it.

爷爷 died. It's my first experience of death in my family (knock on wood), but he lived good, long life! Just sad that he never got to meet Alex or see any grandkids.
Alex and I got married! (legally)
Had a travel adventure of epic proportions.
Alex and I got married again!! (partifully)

And always, had many small adventures this year =)

3D reconstruction and printing
sewing part 2: for the wedding
Losing 20 pounds
Playing tears of the kingdom
attending PhD commencement
Growing peppers, melons, etc
dumplings. A lot of dumplings.
running a 10K

etc.

I had a lot of fun!

New Year's Resolutions

I started being more deliberate last year about New Years' resolutions, since there were a lot of habits that I wanted to form that weren't just coming naturally. Here's this year's batch!

Career:

(100) Do well at job. What does that mean??

Health/Vanity

(10) Lose pounds - starting pt, 130.6

(2) get abs

(500) spend hours outside

(365) spend hours exercising

(No goal) Miles Run

(No goal) Climbing

Self Enrichment:

(2000) Learn to read Chinese characters

(50000) write words for story

(100) art/sketch

First of all... I completely failed at recording these this year >.>... I thought I'd provide this barchart anyways because I ain't about faking data I didn't record, but ya. pretty embarassing hehe

The one thing I recorded pretty decently was my weight over the year! My bro.cc friends and I (really just Shee and I) lost a bunch of weight together XD. My year's high was almost 134 and my year's low, which I apparently didn't bother recording, was 115.8. It was a pretty insane ride. I did not think I would ever reach the 110s again, but I did it (and bounched back up in 3-4 months). It was fun and interesting and I got to see my abs again for the first time in a long time.

...

Ya, a lot happened and my recording habit totally fell by the wayside. I'll just summarize my thoughts regarding my NYR but you'll (I assume my future self) will just have to take my word for it

I thought I did pretty well at my job this year! At the very least, I've made some fantastic friends at Reverie, and a lot of them showed up to my wedding =). That wedding really made it difficult to accomplish much else this year, but I'm really really extra satisfied overall with my work performance. I trained a lot of top performing models and thought I made myself really useful. Sadly Reverie let go of nearly 2/3 of its engineers in July, but even though I'd only been at the company for 9 months, they kept me! The company was later acquired by Gingko in Feb 2024, but I'd already left for my new gig at that point.
Losing weight: I lost almost 20 pounds from apex to trough. Was it sustainable? no ;). It's mid 2024 right now and I peaked out at just about 134 this year and am making my way back down lmfao. smfh. I was briefly "thin" and wore a lot of clothing styles I otherwise eschewed in the course of my life. Getting abs: ya this basically happened. I have some cool shots, although I don't think I've fully accomplished the abs goal yet.
spending hrs outside (500) and exercising (365): I think I must have actually accomplished these goals, because I ran a 10K with my Reverie gang in June, and prior to that, I was walking 1.5 hour back/forth from work nearly everyday. I also went on a long trip with Alex and spent much time outdoors so... Pretty sure I got this one
Miles run: according to nike run club, 167.1!!! 90 runs at an avg pace of 10:45 and 30 hours in total. That's way higher than last year's 24 LMFAO.
Climbing -> ya I basically didn't do this.
Chinese -> I took a test recently and only know 140 chinese characters, RIP
Write -> apparently only achieved 8000 words, but in early 2024, I started writing a Whitebeard Fanfic which at the point of this writing, has 65,000 words LMFAOAOAOAOAOAOAOAOAOAA
art -> I think I basically didn't do this

Establishing healthy habits for life

I must have harped on this last year to some extent, but I'm reaching that age where I'm no longer healthy by default. Ya know, it's really a shame about the inverse correlation between physical and mental health over time. But alas, what can you do? In the last couple years of my 20s, I'm trying my best to develop the healthy habits that will have to take me through my 30s and beyond.

There are two blogposts related to this that I want to write, so I'll just drop placeholders here to commit ahead of time:

<Back pain blogpost> : There was a period of a couple months where I had pain near my right hip that was so intense and uncomfortable that I couldn't sleep and couldn't walk more than a quarter of a mile. I asked my PCP if she had any thoughts about it, and she essentially replied that in my age group, lower back pain was one of the most common complaints and that she would refer me to physical therapy if I wanted. I wrestled it for some time and (mostly?) resolved it, but it really gave me a scare.

<Weight loss blogpost> : I tried pretty hard to lose weight this year. 50% to satisfy my vanity/fit into a slimmm wedding dress, 30% I thought my back pain might come from being too fat, 20% I thought maybe losing weight would make me run faster. Spoiler: Vanity: satisfied <3, Back: still hurty =(, Speed: still slow =(

Overall, I had an amazing year, and it's much thanks to the lovely people I have in my life =). Here's an ever-growing Annual Photo Recap

Annual Photo Recap

The first thing that happened this year was that my grandfather died. He came to the US to raise me for a little bit while I was a baby, and then again to raise my baby sis.

I was very sad when he died, but he lived a very long life and by all accounts, was satisfied and ready to leave.

It's June 2024 right now, and something that's on my mind that I can't escape is that my father-in-law died a couple months ago, a mere half-year after this was taken. I still think about him basically everyday and I wish he hadn't died.

Eric and I spent a bunch of time playing Tears of the Kingdom. We woke up and played a couple hrs everyday for quite some time. Wasn't expecting him to be into it, but he liked flying lol