For some reason I thought that I had started this draft somewhere and maybe I did but here I am at 6:02pm PST on 12/31/21 typing the first line. I am adding the finishing touches to this on 1/1.
2021 was a great year with a lot of improvements, a lot of firsts and a lot of lessons.
Something special about a new year that feels like it is so full of opportunity. This feeling for me rivals the feeling of opening a new notebook that hasn’t had anything written in it or a new calendar. 2021 held a lot more lessons than 2020 it feels like although I am having trouble remembering anything in particular.
Professionally – I learned a lot within my current field and began to quell some of the imposter syndrome that many suffer from. People continuously sought me out to provide answers to engaging questions that they weren’t able to decipher which was interesting. I visited another state across the continent for work which was a unique experience for me and something worth remembering.
Personally – I ran a marathon in October of 2021 after breaking my leg snowboarding in February of the same year. A lot of quality time was spent with my family in a variety of venues / locations. I got married in July of this year. After finding a racing simulator on craigslist, I went ahead and purchased it despite the fact that my leg was broken. I later sold this same racing simulator as I don’t really have a large amount of space and I didn’t use it enough. I have moved my home office 2 or 3 times over the course of the pandemic and continue to struggle with some aspects of working from home but overall I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Being able to spend so much time with my family is something that I continue to appreciate and enjoy.
Passions – This is the only word that I could think of that starts with a P and I enjoyed alliteration. These are mostly projects / hobbies that I engage in. I purchased a new drone in June which has been fun to fly around with. Purchased a new set of wheels for the project car™and installed them. Installed a gym rack in my garage to lift up heavy things when I wish. New laptop was procured in the form of a new Thinkpad and I fell back in love with my laptop computer. I really should do a long post about what has me hooked on Thinkpads. Turns out Amazon sells these nifty Xbox controllers with adapters that I have been using to emulate video games in my living room with and is very fun to play with my Wife and my kids. Reading this back it seems shallow that a lot of these things involve purchases.
Pilgrimage – Just another fun word that starts with the letter P but in this context I mean travel. Without family / for work I went to North Carolina and to northern California. With family we went to Fresno, Lake Havasu City, Monterey x2 and probably a couple of other places that I can’t remember.
Fun Facts learned this year:
- The X in X-ray actually doesn’t stand for anything, it stands for the unknown but they just left it in after they solved for X.
- According to an article in BusinessWeek in 2006, Lego could be considered the world’s number one tire manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tires a year.
- You are not your thoughts.
Ideally I would have a neat little spreadsheet or data visualization of things that I enjoyed and when I enjoyed them including the amount of exercise I did in 2021 but that is a goal for 2022. Maybe a clickable metric of each, that would be pretty neat. Including exercise completed, books read, movies enjoyed, tv shows watched, amazon purchases validated, and favorite websites visited.
Media I enjoyed (not all necessarily came out this year but if they are noted here they were first enjoyed by me in 2021)
- Movies
- Free Solo (2018)
- Nobody (2021)
- Bo Burnham Inside (2021)
- Mirage Men (2013)
- The Assistant (2019)
- Free Guy (2021)
- Music
- Donda – Kanye West
- The album itself is fantastic but the release was truly what made this album so special, rivaled only by The Life of Pablo’s album release process.
- Television driven narratives
- Squid Game (2021)
- Decent 6/10 series, cool to enjoy something foreign in this space as I haven’t done this previously.
- Nine Perfect Strangers (2021)
- Fun idea and pretty good execution of a single season narrative.
- The White Lotus (2021)
- Great show, highly advise watching this
Goals for the year ahead (what I WILL accomplish):
Goals that scare me
- 365,000 – 10,000 steps a day for 365 days straight
- Swimming – start swimming laps, i’ve never done this before.
2022 Daily Goals (easy wins) / Routine
✅ – 10,001 steps+ a day
✅ – 5+ hours of sleep a night
✅ – 2L of water daily
✅ – Daily journal / log Daily
✅ – Duolingo Daily
✅ – Breathing / Stretching Daily
Like this? Check out my post 2020MAXX as a lot of the ideas above can be found in that original post. I actually enjoyed the form of that post a lot more than this one and will likely make some changes to this after I post it. I also did one of these as more of a prelude to this post going into 2021.
It would be really neat to post here more as I feel that the process of writing is very useful and valuable to me but no promises.
That is all for now, happy trails
-Addison