end of year 2024
What a year it's been!
I changed jobs. I moved across the country. I travelled to Europe with a friend (esteemed subscriber Stephen Davis) and alone! I went to three continents. I took studio pictures and I took pole pictures and I took kung fu pictures. And had my first real New Year's party!
It's definitely been quite the adventurous year.
If last year was about finding my footing at home, this year was learning more about myself — pushing myself to be a different me than the one in California.
But through all this adventure, I do still miss home a little. Even when I was in the mountains of Switzerland or in the volcanic plains of Iceland, the thought of home and specifically Simba still remained in the back of my mind. I guess, which goes to say, that even through all the journeying and adventure and travel, there's no place like home.
And there's also nothing like trying to hit your goals! Last year I did indeed set some goals for myself and reflecting on three main goals so let's see how I did on all those.
blogging
goal: hit 52 posts this year.
result: ~54 posts this year
My blogging this year has become remarkably consistent. The effort level is still around the same but even when on the road I've been able to hit the benchmark of about 1 post a week. And yes, there were some weeks where I skipped blogging. I was tired, I forgot, I was out eating dinner. These things all happened.
That's where the travel blogging came in.
I first got the idea when I was in Iceland — I didn't really plan on posting any Instagram stories or anything like that but I still wanted to kind of post to followers semi-regularly. So I started writing notes from Iceland every two days and sending them to followers. After a long day of driving through the most beautiful landscapes I had ever seen, I would sit down and unwind by recounting my adventures to all of you.
These helped buoy my post count — as well as the new prepared sections I've made. It's wild to think that it's only been one year of anonymous subscriber news, and in the year that I've started it I've also began the museum of the week section after moving here to NYC.
So this year? I'm really not sure. I did say last year I wanted to write more ... but maybe I should be aiming for more high quality content. So that I will do.
photography
goal: make small magazines and shoot more black and white film
result: made one photobook and shot a lot of color film
I know I know I said I'd take more black and white film photos — and I did for the beginning half of the year. There came a point where I thought I'd never shoot color again. Until I looked into my freezer. And saw the almost-expired 100 foot roll of Santacolor 100.
Thus, I rolled it all up into canisters and got blasting.
The results of my black and white film excursion have been nothing less than abundantly fruitful. Personally I feel that my photos are a lot livelier than before and rely less on the colors and more on the composition.
I also got to make a photobook! Thanks to my hard work during my Iceland trip posting all those newsletters, I had a body of written work to accompany the cool photos I took and now I can show people!!!
But next year: my goal is to do some more event photos and photos surrounding my communities! I took photos for my cousin's violin recital and that was kind of fun so I'll be trying to do more of that! I also took some photos for my martial arts crew and I'll definitely trying to be doing more of that next year too!
health
goal: bike more
result: moved to new york and gymming more
When I made my goals, I did not expect that I'd be moving to New York.
And here we are!
The daily fitness goals are honestly generally met just from walking around. I'll walk to the grocery store, the gym or just around to restaurants and naturally hit 10,000 steps. Rings aren't really a problem when I hit the gym and I have been doing that much more than before!
Thanks to esteemed subscriber Leo Liu who convinced me to sign up for a nice albeit expensive gym and who has become my gym partner, I definitely am more consistent with the gym. Before when it was just me, there would be days when I'd think to myself — should I really go? Now that I have a gym partner, I found myself motivated enough to hit the gym to warrant CitiBiking across Manhattan.
But while I've been hitting the weights and walking a lot more than I used to, I'd still like to hit some cardio goals. I remember one of my most successful goals was setting mileage goals and I'm thinking that I would want to bike 1000 miles (indoor and outdoor biking) next year (meaning an average of 20 miles a week). This might be a stretch ... but why not??? That's what goals are made of.
And so another year arrives! Thanks to everyone who came with me on this whirlwind of a year. From Iceland to Barcelona to Istanbul, from Seattle to New York. From North America to Asia to Europe and back. I'm ready to take a break and start to embrace the little adventures around my new home. Thanks everyone for following along and see you on Monday!!!
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