2023 Personal Retrospect

A look back at the year 2023
31. 12. 2023 /
#retrospect

Reminiscence

**I finally graduated from college, where I've been a student for 8 years. It's been mostly frustrating. I wish I didn't belong to any school anymore.

Weekly Tech Trends, a two-year tech meetup, is ending We all have jobs now, so finding time on weekend mornings is harder. We young techies who were in college, hungry for growth, are now becoming mature company workers. That's a good thing.

**I shut down my 3-year solo project, HUFS Semester Clock. I was disappointed that I couldn't spend more time running it, but I also lost motivation to continue it when I left college.

The confidence I've gained at work has calmed me down a lot. My anxiety and impatience have decreased so much that I've been able to think deeply about what makes me me, so I've been reading and writing my favorite texts rather than flogging myself with development studies for the first time in years.

I mostly hang out alone I became a master at hanging out alone, which made me think a lot about relationships. I saw a lot of friends I hadn't seen in a long time, and I took the first initiative to meet a lot of people.

Year in Review

Feelings

I realized that I can't live without other people. Almost everything I've accomplished at work this year wouldn't have been possible without my coworkers. There were things I didn't want to lose this year, like the help and inspiration I got from the people who worked with me or the feelings that came from the work that others wrote. Eventually, I came to the realization that I couldn't accomplish or feel much without others.

On the other hand, I used to think I was a human being who didn't feel much of a blow when relationships were broken and rebuilt, but I wasn't.

I feel hopeful that I can reconcile with myself I'm a self-loathing genius. I've always believed that getting into software development was a way to find myself, but the truth is that even after I made a living at it, I killed a lot of parts of myself that I didn't like, parts that I didn't think people would like.

"I thought I had accepted a lot of who I was, but I hadn't, and I had to get rid of many things that were unique to me to become who I was. I wish I knew the parts of me that are gone, like a hand or foot that was cut off from my body." - September 12, 2022

Suddenly, I must mourn the aspects of myself that I have killed and accept them as lost. Last year, I felt like I wanted to, but this year, these aspects are returning. They weren't dead.

Last Year and This year, amid my own struggles, my honest side came out, and I realized that it's okay to stand there as the person I lost. Things like how I expect a lot, grieve, celebrate, and live with an F instead of a T(It's an MBTI thing). I've become more honest with myself and others because I'm less covered up. I feel more at ease with what I say and do.

I want to expand the world I can understand, which feels like the purpose of life. The moments that make me think differently and crack my routine, understanding something new, the person who made it, and the heart and intent behind it, feel like sparkles.

I feel like it's my job to cherish those moments, to keep coming back to them, and to reach out to understand people. I don't want to be shamelessly cynical and give up on understanding, even if sometimes the process is too difficult.

Learning

At the beginning of this year, I started buying and selling stocks again after a long time. I paid for finviz, read books, and looked up reports and reports to build my knowledge. It was great to study for the first time not just stocks but also the different asset classes that can be traded on the stock market and how to build a portfolio. As someone with a very busy day job that doesn't allow me to spend a lot of time investing in stocks, my biggest accomplishment is having a better idea of making my investments sustainable from now on.

I've spent some time thinking about non-development posts on the blog, which has been a fun process, jotting down ideas as they come to me along the way and polishing them up in my iPhone's Notepad before bed. It's been both familiar and strange to me, coming from a time when I thought I could make a living from writing, a time that is long gone. I felt like I was meeting a part of myself that I thought I'd never see again, and I tried to gauge how far the sentences I was producing were from what I thought was good these days.

Next year, I would like to study more related to financial management, practice reading and writing in English again, as I majored in English but am not good at it these days, and internationalize some of the articles on my blog.

Exercise

I did 3 to 4 weekly strength training sessions and ran 560 kilometers, just short of my goal of 600. My best 10 km run was 46:24 at 4:38 per km. I also played badminton with my coworkers. I lost a lot of body fat and gained about 2 kg of lean muscle mass, even though I weighed about the same. I bought a pull-up bar, weighted dumbbells at home, running and badminton equipment, and shoes.

It's probably been the most athletic year I've ever had, not because I had any physical goals, but because I'm an athletic mentalist, and I do it for my mental health—dealing with uncertainty and complexity as part of my daily routine is a recipe for mental clutter. I've worked a lot this year, and it's probably because of exercise that I haven't had any fitness or health issues.

Next year, I want to run over 600 kilometers, a 10-kilometer marathon, do 15 pull-ups in proper posture, and work out with a group rather than alone. I don't want to set a goal for my BMI because if I do that much exercise and eat less, I'll be in so much pain that I won't be able to practice my workout mentality.

Reading.

I've started reading again, a category of books I haven't read much since I started developing. I've been thinking a lot lately, "Why do people do what they do?" I've been reading brain science books about addiction and the nervous system to understand human behavior. I'm reading history books about Nazi Germany's Third Reich to understand people's past.

Most recently, I've been reading literature and prose. I read François Sagan's novels in my early twenties, and it's nice to reread them as I'm older and find them refreshing. I also find a lot of solace in the prose written by Jung Won Mok

Books I read this year : This is How Google Engineers Work / Your Brain Wants to Optimize / Domain Driven Design at Its Core / What Do Cities Live On / Dopaminergic / Ray Dalio's Financial Crisis Template Part 1 / Lift Off / Let the native language be silent / Micro Front Ends for the Modern Web / When it rains in Brazil, get rid of your Starbucks stock / Buy, sell, or earn / Aimez-vous Brahms… / Software Architecture 101 / The Pragmatic Programmer / We Become Our Own World / The Infinite Game / Never Apologize for Being Who You Are / Third Reich History (1) / Third Reich History (2) / How to Time Your Stock Investments Optimally / Compassion for Others / Signs of Defeat

Consumption

I spent a lot of money filling the house I moved into late last year. I spent a lot of money replacing the things I already had with better ones because the many options disappeared when I moved from my college town to my current home. My quality of life has gone up a notch since I'm making more money than when I was in college, but the pitfall is that my spending has also gone up a notch.

Some of the purchases that I've been thrilled with are the LG Whisen dehumidifier, LG monitor with WebOS, iPhone 14, and daylight bulbs. However, I've also had significant spending failures that have disillusioned me with online purchases, especially clothes. It's so hard to get them to look like the real thing, but It is so hard to go out and buy them.

Next year, I'd like to reduce consumption failures, such as making offline purchases through hassle. I think I need to be more intentional.

Discover

I had a lot of fun going to places alone that I would only go to in pairs or groups.

I went to the National Museum of Korea alone and slowly wandered around the permanent exhibits while listening to electronic music. My deep-house mix set with watching Josun-dynasty some relic things is soooo coooool.

I recently saw two plays by myself, which was also great. It was refreshing to come home with my impressions without considering whether other people were comfortable or agreed with the play. But Hannam or Myeongdong is too far away, and I wonder why I didn't visit these places more often when I lived in Gang-buk, but I didn't have money then.

Goals for next year

  • Meet more new people. Find or create opportunities to meet them.
  • Make time to study to write, read, and speak English
  • Reduce spending failures and save more than I did this year

This Year's organized awards

These are the things I liked this year.

Want to say.

  • Even though I reached out to you (to people I haven't seen in a long time), you greeted me as if you had seen me yesterday. I felt like I was receiving hospitality I didn't deserve. Thank you so much. I hope to see you more often.
  • (To those we've met often) Thank you for hanging out with me. I'll have more fun and talk less about development or the company.
  • (To those who got married this year) I've been to many weddings, and they've been bright, bubbly, and pretty. I'm honored to have been invited, and I wish them all a long and happy life.
  • (To Red Velvet) Thank you so much for making a comeback.

(End)

Written by Max Kim
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