2021: My Year in Review
Another year gone? Already? Did the pandemic at least go away? No? Fuck. A lot of things still happened anyway and you best believe I collected even more data on myself than I did last year. Brace yourselves.
I’ll start with the positives. Thankfully, there were many more positives than negatives for me this year. Most notably, I got to do some serious travel again. I started the year with a couple local ski trips to Chestnut Mountain, Alpine Valley, and Big Snow. In February, I got to visit my good friend in Denver and ski in Breckenridge. In April, I went to Moab, Utah to do some big climbs. In June and July I did a couple trips to California - hitting both LA to help one of my best friends pick out her wedding dress, and Tahoe to do some hiking and climbing. I went to Evansville, Indiana in October for a wedding and visited Iowa twice to see family, in both July and then again in November. For Thanksgiving, I went to Tucson and Phoenix, and I ended the year with back-to-back ski trips in Aspen, Colorado and Zermatt, Switzerland. Travel was a big part of my life pre-pandemic so getting to do more trips this year, and even fitting in an international one was absolutely HUGE for me.
I also accomplished a lot this year. Some big wins include paying off all my student loans, starting a new job at Amazon Web Services after getting multiple job offers, and negotiating a contract for my first time. Once starting, I also obtained my Scrum Master certification and AWS Solutions Architect Certification. A huge point of progress for me was also in my climbing. I climbed more than ever this year and improved to a V4/V5 level in bouldering, 5.11+ level on top rope, and am leading 5.11-. I also climbed outside for the first time in Utah, doing some big tower climbs, and climbed outside on two more trips to Tahoe and Tucson. I got more comfortable falling, and with the outdoor climbing systems. It has been a great exercise in fear and anxiety control while still getting a bit of a workout!
The last major positive for me this year was that I fell in love. I started dating someone new towards the end of 2020 and we’ve been together throughout all of 2021 and it’s been amazing. I’ve gotten to do most of the trips I listed with him, and we’ve done countless date nights, including making elaborate dinners to test our cooking skills. This relationship has been one of my brightest highlights of this year.
Now to the negatives. The biggest negative for me this year is the state of my remaining grandparents. I have one left on each side of my family and neither is in the greatest shape. I wrote about my feelings in more detail in this post earlier in the year but coping with my feelings towards their decline and watching my parents go through this has been difficult. As much as I hate to mention it, COVID still put a damper on my year. The rise of both delta and omicron sent my anxiety levels through the roof. I was comforted by the availability of the vaccine, but this pandemic is starting to seem endless. Lastly, the better part of the year was dominated by an ongoing identity crisis. I’m still not really sure what I should be doing with my life and that is a source of much of my sadness, anxiety, and frustration on a consistent monthly, weekly, even daily basis.
Moving on to my favorite part of this recap: I continued my trend of last year of tracking a ton of data about myself and my accomplishments.
First of all, my blog had a weirdly good year, with viewership going up over 70% from 2020. The top posts were as follows:
Once again, relationships and health are the most popular things on my blog. Let this serve as my own personal yearly reminder to focus my interests a little bit to improve viewership even more.
On to my habit data. I ended up tracking 6 major habits this year: Working out, language practice, writing, water consumption, stretching, and climbing. Stretching and climbing were new additions as of March so their data is a little less telling. You can find the full table of monthly data below in the index.
I worked out substantially more in 2021 than in 2020. I worked out an average of 5.5 times per week in 2020 and in 2021 it was 6.7 times per week. As a reminder, I count any type of workout in this data whether it’s running, weight lifting, skiing, or climbing. And on days where I didn’t do a formal workout, I would still count the day if I did more than 10K steps, such as on travel days. The biggest change in this area was the addition of climbing to my routine. I would still do my typical workouts five days a week but then I added in additional climbing sessions on the weekends which pushed my averages way up.
My language practice stayed consistent as compared to 2020. I did at least ten minutes of language practice per day. The piece that isn’t captured in the language data is that I’ve now been seeing a Greek tutor once a week for 3.5 years and a Mandarin tutor for 1.5 years. I also instituted a new flashcard system for myself in the third quarter of 2021 and added additional language practice that way. For 2022, the focus will be on adding in reading sessions to improve my comprehension.
My water goal was still to drink 2L of water per day *takes another sip as I write*. I managed to hit this roughly 6.5 days out of every week. I’m thinking this one might deserve attention as I’ve consistently managed to hit this for two years now. For 2022, I will consider upping the goal to 2.5L per day with the eventual goal to be 3L. I also have to find some way to simultaneously train my bladder since going to the bathroom all the time is still a barrier on this one.
Despite my blog viewership improving, my writing habit suffered in 2021. In 2020, I wrote consistently about 4 days per week, and in 2021, it was closer to 3 days per week. I majorly suffered from a lack of inspiration this past year and although it has consistently been a goal of mine to have a more structured writing schedule to keep improving this habit, I failed to institute one yet again.
One of the new habits I tracked in 2021 was stretching. I tracked this separate from my workouts and everything else because I wasn’t doing it as part of my fitness habit. I wanted to improve my mobility and make sure I wasn’t getting stiff from sitting at home, working all day. I counted anything that was 10 minutes of stretching and above towards this. I completed this habit roughly 4.5 times per week. These stretching sessions usually corresponded to my 5 Mon-Friday workouts but my weekends suffered. My area of improvement will be to prioritize it during any weekend workouts sessions as well.
The last habit I tracked was climbing. This one was more just fun to track than anything else since I consider climbing an additional pursuit on top of my other workouts. I climbed an average of twice per week which is far more than I’ve ever climbed consistently before. This consistency is what led to my massive improvements in this sport over the last year and I’ll need to keep it up if I want to continue to improve quickly.
Last year I tracked my media consumption and it was so fun to look back at all the new things I’d watched and read. This year, I read 43 new books, watched 82 new movies, and 27 new shows or seasons of shows. The same rules apply as last year. I only tracked movies I had never seen and books I had never read. For TV shows, I tracked a brand new TV show only if I made it through more than ten episodes or the first season, but I also tracked any new seasons that I watched of a TV show I had already been keeping up with. You can find the full lists of each of these categories if you scroll down to the index!
I also continued to track new restaurants. Since things opened up a little bit more this past year and I got to travel, I ended up keeping track of 121 new restaurants. I got to explore much of what my home city of Chicago has to offer, and going on so many trips meant I ate out even more than usual. Once again, all the restaurants are listed below in the index.
Lastly, per usual, I tracked my spending. I’ve been doing this exercise since 2016 but only the last couple of years have truly been worth analyzing. In 2021, I had two major financial changes. The first was that I paid off all my student loans, so I no longer had that major monthly expense. The second was that I got a new job that pays substantially more than my previous one. Figuring out my new budgets for savings and investing are top of my priority list for 2022. Below you can see the breakdown of my spending. It’s especially rewarding to see the travel category be so large now. In 2020 it was only 4.6% of my spending and now it is almost one-fifth! Most of my other categories stayed relatively the same which means my spending on everything else has remained consistent.
Overall, I feel as though I can’t complain too much about this year. All things considered, I think I did the best I could, and I think that’s still all we can expect of ourselves.
INDEX
All-time Favorites for the year (books, movies, tv shows, restaurants, products)
Products:
AHA/BHA toner, Biossance sunscreen, AmandaRachLee Planner, Nalgene Water bottle, Divvy bike subscription, Mistobox subscription, Uplift desk, Kitchen aid mixer (technically a gift :))
Books:
Never Split the Difference, Salvation of a Saint, Eat a Peach, Fluent Forever, How to Do Nothing, Cooked, Crying in H Mart, If We Were Villains, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Vicious
TV Shows:
Attack on Titan (Anime-Netflix), Lupin (Netflix), Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime-CrunchyRoll), Violet Evergarden (Anime-Netflix), Sex Education (Netflix), Squid Game (Netflix), Succession (HBO Max), Cowboy Bebop (Anime - Hulu), Witcher S2 (Netflix)
Movies:
Demon Slayer-Mugen Train (theaters), The Game (Netflix), Lady Vengeance (Vudu), Dune (HBO Max), Alien (Rented), The Farewell (Hulu), Promising Young Woman (HBO Max)
Restaurants:
Omakase Yume, Kumiko, Tortello, Momotaro, Happy Lamb Hotpot, Monteverde, Moody Tongue, Hangari Kalguksuk (Los Angeles, CA), Boka, French Alpine Bistro (Aspen, CO) Potato (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Habit Data: Below is a table with all my habit data. Each column shows the number of days that month I completed that habit. I like having this as a reference because the tracking action itself helps me to do the habit and then at the end I can find patterns. For example, this year, I can see that my writing habit started out pretty strong, especially through the spring but then tapered off. Going back to my writings from that time period might prove to be good inspiration for me moving forward.
All Books: Below, you’ll find a full list of the books I read, their authors, the page count, a one-sentence summary, if it was a recommendation, and my own personal enjoyment rating. The rating is out of 5 and it is purely based on how compelling I found the book to be, and nothing else.
Champion - Marie Lu (374). The finale to the ‘Legend’ Series. 4/5
Rebel - Marie Lu (378). Another offshoot to the Legend world. 3/5
The Map That Changed The World - Simon Winchester (329). Talks about one of the most relevant geological maps ever created. I thought it was going to be about cartography so my bad on this one. 3/5
The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu (399) - The start to an epic science fiction tale about how humanity might handle the realization that aliens are coming 4/5
The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu (512) - The second book in the three body problem series 5/5
Algorithms to Live By - Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths (278) - A look at different formulas and algorithms that are pervasive in our lives. Was interesting but did not inspire action. 4/5.
The Undoing Project - Michael Lewis (362). Discusses research into human decision making and biases. 5/5
Never Split The Difference - Chris Voss (258). A super straightforward guidebook to negotiation. 5/5.
The Last Unicorn - Peter S Beagle (294). Loved this movie as a child and finally read the book. Made me feel just as melancholy. 5/5
The Company - John Micklethwait & Adrian Woolridge (191). An overview of the history of company structures and formation. Recommended. 2/5
Salvation of a Saint - Keigo Higashino (330). A murder mystery where no one even knows how the murder was committed. 5/5
Such a Fun Age - Kiley Reid (310). The story of a young black woman who is wrongly accused of kidnapping while babysitting a white child. 3/5.
A Midsummer’s Equation - Keigo Higashino (368). Another murder mystery, set in idyllic coastal Japan. 5/5.
Rule of Wolves - Leigh Bardugo (608). The second book in the king of scars duology. Love everything this woman writes. 5/5
The Gifted School - Bruce Holsinger (452). The story of how cutthroat parents can be on behalf of their children. 5/5
The Whisper Network - Chandler Baker (352). A story about sexual harassment in the workplace. Strongly mirrors the movie Bombshell. Recommended. 3/5
Ready Player Two - Ernest Cline (371) - Sequal to Ready Player One. I recommend that one. I don’t recommend this one. 1/5
Eat a Peach - Dave Chang (291) - Dave Chang is a huge name in the food world and reading his memoir was a breath of fresh air in celebrity books. 5/5
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain (308) - I’m overdue on this one but it was a great look into Bourdain’s life and all the little things that go on behind the scenes at restaurants. 5/5
Sex and Vanity - Kevin Kwan (319) - A fun rich person romp, per all his other books. 4/5
Fluent Forever - Gabriel Wyner (376) - Details strategies to learning languages and getting them to stick. My new flashcard method is directly from this book. 5/5
Deep Work - Cal Newport (287) - Details research regarding the flow state and how to stay focused on what is important. 4/5
How to Do Nothing - Jenny Odell (218) - A commentary on today’s attention economy and how to live with it to maximize happiness. 5/5
The Beauty of the Husband - Anne Carson (145) - A poetry book regarding relationships, sex, and infidelity. 5/5
Malibu Rising - Taylor Jenkins Reid (371) - The story of a wealthy, but sad family, recovering from tragedies. 5/5
The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides (336) - A thriller regarding a murderess who never spoke a word after the act. A psychotherapist tries to get to the bottom of it. 5/5
Cooked - Michael Pollan (439) - A look at man’s interaction with food and transformation throughout time. Truly made me look at food differently afterwards. 5/5
Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner (243) - a heartbreaking memoir about Michelle’s loss of her mom. 5/5
Omnivore’s Dilemma - Michael Pollan (450) - A discussion of how to ethically consume food in today’s world. 4/5
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir (481) - a fun sci-fi novel about a mission to investigate why our sun is dying. Not his best book but Weir’s style is addictive to read. 5/5
Hello (from here) - Chandler Baker (343) - a teen romance in COVID times. 1/5
If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio (363) - a dark take on theater kids 5/5
The Husbands - Chandler Baker (352) - an even darker take on feminism and the detriments of weaponized incompetence. 3/5
Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi (214) - four tales that take place in a coffee shop that allows for time travel. Prepare your tissues. Recommended. 5/5
Interior Chinatown - Charles Yu (271) - probably the most interestingly written book I read this year. Details the Chinese experience in media through the lens of multiple generations. Recommended. 4/5
Mediocre - Ijeoma Oluo (320) - discusses the question of why so many mediocre white men are elevated to such high positions when there are so many other talented individuals. 4/5
Billion Dollar Whale - Tom Wright & Bradley Hope (382) - details the wild story of one man who swindled governments, banks, and everyone in between. 4/5
The Night Circus - Erin Morganstern (392) - a fun fantastical mystery about a traveling circus and the two people who are using it as their battle ground. 3/5
A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (400) - Four different London’s. Some have magic, some do not. The imbalance makes for a good story. 4/5
A Gathering of Shadows - V.E. Schwab (513) - The sequel to A Darker Shade of Magic. 4/5
A Conjuring of Light - V.E.Schwab (626) - The final book in the series. 4/5
Vicious - V.E.Schwab (365) - What are the moral implications of creating a super hero? 5/5
Vengeance - V.E. Schwab (495) - The sequel to Vicious. 5/5
All Movies:
Back to the Future
Love Guaranteed
Talladega Nights
The Firm
MERU
Promising Young Woman
The Dressmaker
High Rise
Monster Hunter
The Wedding Ringer
That’s My Boy
TAG
To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before 3
Shaun of the Dead
The Mauritanian
Get Hard
Hall Pass
Let’s Be Cops
Weight of Gold
Only Fans: Selling Sexy
A Nice Girl Like You
Nobody
The Courier
DemonSlayer - Mugen Train
Army of the Dead
500 Days of Summer
I Care A Lot
Dante’s Peak
Chaos Walking
Gone Baby Gone
Wrath of Man
Woman in the Window
A Good Year
Inuyasha - Castle Beyond the Looking Glass
The Farewell
The Misfits
Good on Paper
Friends Reunion
The Tomorrow War
ReelRocks
F9
The Game
Proof of Life
The Dilemma
The Manchurian Candidate
The Suicide Squad
Moneyball
Idiocracy
Zodiac
Reminiscence
The Net
Alien
Aliens
Couples Retreat
Shang-Chi
The Alpinist
Clear and Present Danger
In The Line of Fire
Orange Years: Nickelodeon
Patriot Games
Airforce One
Predator
Hunt for Red October
Premonition
Alien 3
No Time To Die
Dune
Official Secrets
Alien 4
Alien vs. Predator
Alien vs. Predator Requiem
Lady Vengeance
Red Notice
Predator 2
Black Widow
Lovehard
Jungle Cruise
Mortal Engines
The Operative
The Rescue
The Lost Leonardo
Don’t Look Up
All TV Shows:
Bridgerton (Season 1)
Mandalorian (Season 1 & 2)
LUPIN (Season 1)
Attack on Titan (Seasons 1-present)
Wandavision (Season 1)
Ginny & Georgia (Season 1)
Inuyasha (Seasons 1-6)
Falcon & Winter Soldier (Season 1)
My Hero Academia (Season 5)
Shadow & Bone (Season 1)
Loki (Season 1)
Jujutsu Kaisen (Season 1)
The Bold Type (Final Season)
Never Have I Ever (Season 2)
Violet Evergarden (All Seasons)
Nevertheless (Season 1)
Sex Education (Season 3)
Dear White People (Season 4)
Squid Game (Season 1)
Succession (Seasons 1-present)
YOU (season 3)
Demon Slayer (Season 2)
Cowboy Bebop - Anime (All Episodes)
Big Mouth (Season 5)
Insecure (Season 5)
Selling Sunset (Season 4)
Witcher (Season 2)
All Restaurants:
Avli
Ramen-San
Pho Cafe
Tanta
Dually’s Bar
Haymarket Brewery
Roka Akor
The Weary Traveler (Madison WI)
Elk & Hound (Wakefield WI)
Gorski’s (Mosinee WI)
Crumbl Cookies (Denver, CO)
Cabra
Qing Xiang Yuan Dumplings
Meetfresh
Travelle
Momotaro
Blue Door Farmstand
Happy Lamb Hot Pot
Slurp Slurp
Himalayan Restaurant
Eleven/Eleven
Gloria’s Cafe (Moab UT)
Sunset Grill (Moab UT)
Moab Brewery (Moab UT)
Trailhead (Moab UT)
Sweet Cravings (Moab UT)
Spitfire (Moab UT)
Spitz (Salt Lake City UT)
Mint (Salt Lake City UT)
Prime & Provisions
Joe’s Imports
Monteverde
Poppy & Rose (LA, CA)
Summer Rolls (LA, CA)
Grand Central Market (LA, CA)
Hangari Kalguksuk (LA, CA)
Sunlife (LA, CA)
The Lobster (LA, CA)
C&S Cafe (LA, CA)
Nile Coffee (LA, CA)
Butcher Baker and Cappuccino Maker (LA, CA)
Mr. C Beverly Restaurant (LA, CA)
Athena
9 Muses
Gaijin
Saigon Sisters
Moody Tongue
Chakan Sullongtang (LA, CA)
Bacari (LA, CA)
Mamita’s (LA, CA)
Trailhead Coffee (Lake Tahoe, CA)
5050 Brewing (Lake Tahoe, CA)
Whitecaps Pizza (Lake Tahoe, CA)
South Lake Tahoe Brewing (Lake Tahoe, CA)
The Brewery (Lake Tahoe, CA)
Baked Bear (Lake Tahoe, CA)
TZUCO
Machine Engineered
Boka
Andros Taverna
Italian Village
Trivoli Taverna
Eddie V’s
La Josie
Omakase Yume
QiaoLin Hotpot
Tortello
Xi’an Cuisine
Shang Noodle
Bar Avec
Thai Time
Duck Duck Goat
Mama Delia
Boqueria
Krispy Rice
High Five Ramen
Hugo Tea
Estereo
The Whistler
Copperhead (Evansville IN)
Myriad Brewing (Evansville IN)
Madeline’s (Evansville IN)
The Darling
The Aviary
Omakase Takeya
Azul
Off Color Brewing
Au Cheval
Kumiko
Pastiche (Tucson AZ)
Zona 38 (Tucson AZ)
8 Degrees (Tucson AZ)
Frost (Tucson AZ)
Wild Garlic Grill (Tucson AZ)
Dove Brewing (Tucson AZ)
HASH Breakfast Cafe (Phoenix AZ)
Bourbon & Bones (Phoenix AZ)
Weft & Warp (Phoenix Andaz AZ)
Grapes & Grains
Kizuki Ramen
Locale (Aspen, CO)
Chica (Aspen, CO)
Sam’s (Aspen, CO)
Cloud 9 Alpine Bistro (Aspen, CO)
French Alpine Bistro (Aspen, CO)
Bear’s Den (Aspen, CO)
JING (Aspen, CO)
Paradise Bakery (Aspen, CO)
Aspen Brewing (Aspen, CO)
Café de Pyrenees (Bern, Switzerland)
Basecamp Hotel (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Old Zermatt (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Fuchs bakery (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Cups (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Restaurant Schwarszee (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Potato (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Julen (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Theodors Stuba Zermatt 1896 (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Ice Bar/Pizzeria (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Stephanie’s Creperie (Zermatt, Switzerland)
Klein Matterhorn (Zermatt, Switzerland)
From 12/27 in Bern, Switzerland. My Golden Birthday!