I’m seeing right now how long it has been since I last put in an entry. The reasons being that since COVID struck us, my life has been neither very outgoing nor adventurous, and really has been just a stale withering away from a slow and dull form of decay, which culminated into some crisis events. Coping and dealing with those moments were captured elsewhere in writing. They weren’t things I would share openly. But, when things seemed so down and low, I gave myself no other direction to look to except upward, and that’s the course in which I’ve been steadily trying to move. I’m not going to mince words, the year of 2023 has been so bad for me, worse actually at some points than the actual onslaught of the pandemic in the years earlier. I kept denying these things and putting aside my own health and security to cope with them, rationalizing with the truth that so many others around me were having worse luck than I was. However, it didn’t change the fact that I was also suffering for a long while and not attending to it in better ways. The best thing about 2023 was that it forced me to change; to embrace better change. I’m going to focus on what has been good.
Last Purchase of 2023: Technically, my official last
purchase was a tray of sushi on New Year’s Eve, but the biggest, most
significant purchase was getting a new laptop. The old one was becoming
retarded in every literal sense of the word, because it’s over eight years old
for one thing. I was justified in using the Boxing Day sales as an opportunity
to replace it.
Best Purchase of 2023 for under $100.00: A Chromecast
dongle. The best thing about it is being able to readily stream in YouTube
instructional/science videos on my TV screen with a greatly simplified
interface. Those instructional videos consequently have led me to better things
and outcomes.
Last Accomplishment of 2023: I reached the 5000 km
mark in recorded runs in the Nike Running Club app. I should have finished this
years ago, but health issues got in the way, despite the effort to live
healthier. It is a reminder that it’s OK for things to be postponed until I’m
in better shape to tackle them again.
Last Book of 2023: I didn’t partake it a formal Yule
Bookfest this year with any company. It was debatable as to when it actually
would have been (was it on Dec 17 or on Dec 24 this year?) Anyway, I’ve been
trying to embrace as much outside walking time as I could whilst the weather
was mild, and I serendipitously found a meaningful free book in one of the community’s
little library boxes. It is by one of my favourite non-fiction authors, Bill
Bryson, and it is one of his earlier works titled Neither Here nor There.
I hope it will inspire me to travel again someday, and to keep being curious about
and enjoying walking tours of strange, unknown places; both figuratively and
literally, even if it has to be alone.
Best App of 2023: To anyone who has scoffed at the
idea of meditation, I would retort that they just aren’t brave enough to face
just how really messed up their heads are. That’s where the app Balance
comes in. I’ve tried meditation a few times before, and I confess that I wasn’t
ever successful at calming down my monkey mind. I indeed need a more guided
approach to it, and this app serves to do that. It is available for Ios and I’m
sure it is available for Android as well. It has been most powerful for me in
terms of re-finding my focus, taming down anxiety/stress, approaching my days
with more positivity and gratitude, and overall generally motivating me to live
a healthier lifestyle. Without it, I
would probably be still carrying around an extra 14 kg (or more) of excess
body mass, sleepless, constantly brain-fogged, and perhaps even dead from some other imbalance, or inflammation induced
affliction.
Most Useful Knowledge taken from 2023: Lot of
scientific stuff related to mechanism of mitochondrial uncoupling, a
foundational, and of course a cellular thing, that’s largely neglected in the
medical and nutritional fields. Using that to adjust my diet accordingly has
made a huge difference in both my body and mind. Finding a balanced and
feasible amount of exercise to do that’s right for me has been most helpful as
well.
Newest Ambition for 2024: I rediscovered the
beautiful system and mechanism of flowcharting ideas, and now that I can focus
better, I want to apply myself to do more coding and programming. I reason that
if I can trouble myself daily to learning the irrational stuff about the weird intricacies and manner
in which other foreign languages are spoken (i.e. grammatical gender)*, wouldn’t
it be sensible, more so even, if I tuned in more and learned about a language
that was more purely algorithmic and rational (to a machine), which I could
regularly use in a practical application to automate stuff in my life. I
changed my diet over significantly, and thus I have veered away from doing a
lot of extra cooking; so I need another hobby to substitute for that time which
is equally economical and productive**. The new laptop needs a purpose. There are
also other physical projects and objectives to engage in and be challenged with
in 2024, but those are too personal to relate here.
*- My Anglophone mind/self is always perplexed as to
why a chair in French is considered feminine, or why a girl in German is neuter
thing, or why some abstract thing like “a project” in Spanish is the masculine “un
Proyecto”, or why water and beer in Swedish are some strange gender designation
apart from the sexes of man or woman in their language. It is why English speakers are especially challenged
by this ridiculous and archaic concept in linguistics and language learning in
genera, and arrogantly think that everyone else should just learn English.
Degrees of the formally in addressing the 2nd person singular/plural
in other languages, especially German, are also bothersome for me with my
English speaking mind.
**- Three days earlier, a complete stranger in the queue at the grocery store was guessing that I was a computer programmer. What prompted him to dare to engage me about this is completely lost to me, but if I look the part, maybe I can successfully act the part.
