What I Did in 2022

I totally write this on Chinese New Year’s Eve rather than actual New Year’s to be celebratory, why do you ask?

Honestly, 2020 and 2021 were quite a blur, and only in 2022 did I really feel like I actually had change. There may be overlap with 2021 as a result.

Part of the reason I like to write is to fight back this feeling of time blazing past. I have like 20 draft posts that hopefully I’ll actually finish up. Drafts is too strong a word– more like journal entries? Nebulous thoughts that I quickly scratched down. It’s one thing to write down a half-strung thought (I refuse to get a Twitter), but another altogether to synthesize and clean it up for a digestible post.

It’s also quite a trip looking back at my “What I learned in 2019” post. It feels so young? And I felt a little forlorn when I didn’t see any 2021-esque similar blurb. On the other hand, I have come to realize that quantizing life in these yearly phases loses some of its magic. We have phases, yes, but operating without this (self-imposed) deadline of “This year is the year for XYZ!!” is quite freeing. Like any wave, we cannot observe both our position and speed without great sacrifices in accuracy (Is this too stretch of a metaphor?) This yearly review cadence is a bit much for Dan Wang as well, whose letters are probably the most immersive writing I’ve ever read, and thus the time to synthesize it all must be immense.

It’s also a little bit like stocks. It can often be a bit limiting to glance at a yearly window amongst a backdrop of 10 different things, and thus extrapolating off this (especially in 2022!) can be misleading. A temperature check is fair game, but deeper narratives are dangerous to formulate.

Unpairing yourself from this Yearly Synchronization is interesting. Why wait for a “New Year’s Resolution” to lose weight? Just do it now! There’s no restriction for doing anything, nor does it matter when it got done. Just do it now, and you’ll be happy for trying it, and maybe then the gym won’t be a hellhole in the first week of January.

I remember in college thinking the people who were clearly above 40 years old were weird. Why go to college again? Is there something wrong with their job? Are they a creep if they hang out around college kids all day? But the reality is that they’ve embraced the above idea. There’s no deadline for anything, no restriction for your goals, least of all some kids who think you’re weird for pursuing your curiosity.

Anyways, yes, I’m feeling a bit phasic right now. In 2022ish I–

• Read a lot more. I have read 5 books. A PhD is Not Enough, A Tenth of a Second, Zero to One, Grit, and Slaughterhouse-Five. Does an audiobook count? “I’m Glad my Mom Died”. I have taken a much greater interest in non-fiction (sans Vonnegut), though in high school I read a vast amount of “classics”, so it’s a departure still from my younger days.
  • I tried to read Cannery Row because I love Steinbeck, but I really could not get past the first chapter due to Lee Chong’s characterization. Did he really have to replace all of his R’s with literally an L?

    There was left to him only the possibility of saving face and Mack was likely to be very generous about that. Lee said, “You like pay lent my place? You like live there same hotel?”

• Workout Daily. My usual routine is 4x a week of weightlifting, and 3x running.
  • Ego aside, apart from physical changes, the mental sharpness is a huge benefit I wish I intuited earlier, and also daily life is so much easier on every level. Minimal back issues, easier times going up SF hills, etc.
  • On the cognitive benefits, there’s a reason why Alan Turing was a devoted runner. My mental model is that applying such a visceral hernia-inducing-if-you’re-not-careful physical stimulus on your body forces attention at every level to make writing or coding more sereneful by comparison.
  • I follow my routine pretty strictly, except during vacations. During vacations, I feel amazing the first 3-4 days after which I begin feeling sluggish and sometimes moody. These days, I run 6x a week as prep for the SF marathon next year.
• Got a cat! Whom people say is unlike all the other cats. As every cat owner says.
• Have been to Yosemite 3 times (I don’t know why but great every time. Autumn is my favorite).
• Became a podcast fanatic. They’re a great help during running sessions. Freakonomics and Hardcore History have been a great listen.
  • In high school, our coach was adamant about not using music to run, viewing it as a crutch. Guess I’ve gone soft.
• Try out online courses. I’ve taken Cryptography I on Coursera. I have notes for the course that I hope to clean up and publish, mostly for myself since it’s a handy review (btw the whole blurb on restrictions that I mentioned? Why is the follow up Cryptography II, an online course, only offered in the summer!?!)
  • As part of my endeavor to learn more, I actually applied to grad school already. Stay tuned for a 2023 update on how well that goes?
• Improved Mandarin greatly. I had taken Mandarin as a kid but stopped, but have wanted to pick it up again. Nowadays I routinely hold my own at Chinese restaurants (truly a feat).
  • Living in the Bay has exposed me to much more to Chinese and Taiwanese culture, and I’ve been finding myself wanting to relate to this more. I’m a definite believer that language connects people, sometimes even manifesting as personality differences when speaking multiple languages. It’s helpful communicating with my parents as well, and now I’m not completely lost during dinner parties.
  • I’d estimate I know over 3000 words now? Check back in with me next year. I’m learning both Traditional and Simplified, a whole contentious debate by the way.
  • I often debate with my friends whether it’s “necessary” to “know” Chinese to call yourself Chinese, or more generally, whether you must know X language to be X heritage. I’m still unsure about this. We don’t say Jewish people must speak Hebrew, so why do we say this about other cultures?
• I tutor. It makes me feel old, but also gives me a chance to refine my personal beliefs on “growth”. What is maturity? How can you learn a topic properly? How should one react when you don’t know something or are factually wrong? How can you train yourself to recognize patterns?
  • In some sense, tutoring helps me explore these ideas. Often though, I can feel pigeonholed into the school’s weekly schedule and we just need to memorize some dumb little thing that they will certainly forget next week, but we just need an A on the quiz OK? If I had more time I’d love to explore deeper and develop an intuition to last forever, but I only have an hour and next week they have more homework so I guess we’ll just memorize the area of a triangle and call it there.

Goals for 2023

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like to “label” years, and when my goals come up, I simply do them.

Further, they say having incredibly non-rigid concrete “Resolutions” aren’t great. Having some “themes” can be better, because it provides a subconscious nudge rather than a “need”. I.e. it’s more attainable to say “This is a year of Reading” rather than “Read 20 books” and less nebulous than “Read”. Sort of like a mid-level hiearchichal goal from Grit.

Plus when I look at my 2019 goals, I definitely didn’t do them :). Too many responsibilities as we grow up? Too many interesting things in life? Too non-committal in my projects? Probably all of the above really.

However I’ve already committed (i.e. paid for) a couple things, so I’ll mention them here, as the sunk cost fallacy works greatly in my favor to give up my spent dollars.

• I applied for grad school. We’ll see if I get in? But, conditional on getting in, it’d be nice to do additional research.
• Run a sub-4 hour marathon
• This breaks my above rule, but finish some of my damn drafts. I have so many written already.

Overall, post-covid time has been great. A 30 year-old coworker once said that being 30 is like being 20 but you have money. I am gradually seeing the wisdom in his words.