Ten years of this! After chaos metastasized in 2020 and I somehow got through the onslaught that was 2021, I'm finally returning to growth mode in 2022. Playing expansively instead of treading water feels amazing. Two things characterized the year: CodeCombat business success and reviving the concept of personal goals by integrating them with family time. It's been a good year.
As always, here are my annual personal inventory reflections and notes.
When it rains, it pours. When it doesn't rain... everything's on fire? This year's sunrise thwarting brought to you not by water but by flame. Too smoky for this. Instead, I again hit up the sensory deprivation tank. Here's a consolatory sunrise from the hike up to Gunn Peak I did a couple months ago.
After last year's goal setting, Chloe and I bought a Tonal home gym, on which I've now done 87 strength training workouts. This thing is so cool! It estimates that I've increased my overall strength score from 502 to 1078 over the last eleven months. I think it's probably underestimating the beginning and overestimating the real-world gains, and my body composition hasn't changed much, but I feel stronger, and it's super convenient to get a full-body strength workout with all supersets in 20-30 minutes with no commute and no workout planning, even with the kids playing right next to me.
Over the next year, I plan to keep working out with the Tonal, doing more hiking meetings to improve my endurance, and to focus more on diet to lean out a little more.
44 push-ups, +4: fast, strict, chin touching the ground.
20 pull-ups, +0: fast, no kipping, chin above bar.
I hadn't done push-ups or pull-ups all year, but the related pressing helped, if not the pulling. I'm a bit surprised that those lat pull-downs didn't help more. Maybe this year, I'll mix in actual pull-ups.
I called my bro and listened to some new hip-hop as I walked around the downtown Bellevue park after the sensory deprivation tank. Such a luxury, to walk in a city these days.
My reading had fallen off a pandemic cliff, down to just three books last year, only 1,538 pages. This year, I dove into some extremely long books like Ward and Mad Investor Chaos and the Woman of Asmodeus, so at this rate, I'll have read only eight total books but more pages than in any other year except maybe 2015 (when I read the first Worm and speedran a lot of parenting books during an actual 3-month parental leave).
Year Books Pages
2008 28 8,946
2009 18 7,244
2010 12 3,312
2011 16 6,469
2012 35 13,985
2013 33 11,760
2014 15 5,796
2015 30 18,694
2016 16 8,487
2017 17 6,824
2018 14 7,423
2019 21 13,901
2020 7 34,408
2021 3 1,538
2022* 6* 11,217*
I indulged in more actually-smart-supervillains goodness today. My goal is to finish these two big ones by the end of the year.
We kept them alive, we took some photos, and even taught them a few things (Max picked up a bunch of magic tricks, Clark memorized 192 digits of pi and 900 Chinese characters, and Ruby can say six words: "dad", "this", "uh-oh", "rice", "daddy", and "bib"). That's pretty good, I guess, even if I wrote zero blog posts about it this year. Perhaps next year I'll have a follow-up on Ruby's language acquisition.
Back on this! This year, cholesterol looked a little better, especially LDL and Apo B. The omega-3s, fatty acid balances, and metabolism indicators were really great. Most all misc assorted vitals were good or great, with just a few minor sub-indicators edging into at-risk. The exception was, unsurprisingly, high iron levels (92% iron saturation!!). I need to go give blood ASAP, and probably make it a recurring habit at this point, since my diet hasn't been crazy iron-rich like it was the last time this happened after I was eating a ton of tinned baby clams.
Potassium was a little lower than last time, now low-normal instead of high-normal. Might be worth supplementing. Phosphorus/phosphate was low, so that needs diet or supplement attention. Eosinophils were very high, so next time I talk to a doc, I'll ask about that, but could be a temporary fluctuation.
I think I'm over 99. It does not matter. The house is full of others' things. I have a good setup in my office, I want for little else. I shall not count. Perhaps if we move. Until then:
I may have gone a little overboard on the home office setup, but man, the productivity is so high with ten screens! I love it!
Top comment (translated from Russian): "We had 7 monitors, 2 laptops, 4 keyboards, two headphones, iron man parts, a bunch of plants, tables and other devices. Not that all this was needed in the work, but once you started collecting gadgets, then go in your hobby to the end. The only thing that bothered me was the treadmill. There is no one in the world more helpless, irresponsible and immoral than a man in a motionless race. And I knew that pretty soon we would plunge into it." (reference)
My team just shook their heads and made memes.
CodeCombat has been growing well and is sustainably profitable now, so although I haven't saved anything, my salary is back after two years of pandemic-inspired privation, and I'm feeling good!
(If you're me, you get to see finance stats here. Since you're not me, you see nothing.)
The brain seems fine. The various subtest analyses were very similar to and a little better than last year's, with most showing insignificant relationships with age.
Note that all these graphs have cut-off vertical axes, and in most cases very little variation compared to population variation.
I got to catch up with everyone, and have been entertaining more family visitors than before, which has been really great. The more children I make, the more the family comes to visit? There it is, a hot travel hack for the recalcitrant traveler!
Chloe surprised me with a fancy seafood restaurant. No children, so many raw delicacies–delightful! She also made her paleo dark chocolate French Silk Pie (somehow! when did she have time?!) and my brain exploded. I felt loved beyond words.
I got through the other side on my main business challenges, creating more and more space for personal growth.
I think it's useful to explicitly measure books and pages read, Tonal stats, and happiness levels, so I'll keep those elements in, alongside the family photo.
I have a hard enough time completing this in a couple days, so if I'm to update my list of possessions, it should probably be aligned with a move or other event, rather than Me Day. Removing.