2013 in review
Shit, what a year.
2013 has been easily the best — and most hectic — twelve months of my life thus far. To point out the highlights:
- Graduated (having declared my Computer Science major less than a week beforehand)
- Moved across the country to Seattle
- Fallen in love with Seattle and everything that being a Seattle resident entails (more about this in a little)
- Purchased a George Foreman Grill
First, though, I’d like to share with you all the three statistics that have really summed up 2013 for me. I’ve tracked them over the past year and I think they’re fairly illuminating of how things have gone:
You can easily notice some major trends coinciding with my move to Seattle:
- Because some critics claim that drinking Natty Light on weekdays becomes significantly less acceptable once you’re no longer in college, I’ve switched a lot of my beer consumption over to PBR. (Thankfully, I live in Seattle, so the same cannot be said about wearing sweatpants in public.)
- Facial hair hit a peak right before graduation, at which point I became more or less clean-shaven. Since then, my non-beard has been in a state of constant flux punctuated by points where I just decide I look completely unacceptable.
- And the jeans just keep on getting skinnier. (True story, when I visited my parents for homecoming — and keep in mind this is the first time I’ve seen them in around six months — the first thing my dad says to me is Oh, you wear skinny jeans now.)
Seriously, though, my day-to-day routine has changed so much in the span of so little time it’s almost hard to remember what life was like. I say almost hard — Molly, my girlfriend, who is as beautiful as she is talented, is in her senior year now, and it’s funny to notice the parallels of our senior years: while I can’t say I miss 8a.m. classes or Swem or the unending agony of group PowerPoint presentations, it’s hard for me to believe that this time last year I was still filled with so much uncertainty about life in a new city, on a new track.
Thankfully, things are awesome. A few notes about the past six months:
- Living alone is literally the greatest thing ever.
- Weekend trips across the country becomes a lot less fun when you’re paying for airfare — and have to go to work Monday morning.
- Reading and writing become much, much more satisfying when you’re not doing it for a letter grade.
- The schedule of the real world is so much more bizarre — and taxing — than that of college. Though I spent more time doing things in college — papers, clubs, problem sets, mixers, the list goes on — I feel like I spend so much more energy now. I get home from work at 5pm and I’m mentally exhausted, deprived of the desire to work on anything else. This is something I’m trying to get better at — I aim to write twice a week, read a book a week, yadda yadda.
I’ve got some goals for 2014, too, and even though they’re pretty embarassing I’m going to share them:
- Bike, like, a thousand miles. Well, literally a thousand miles.
- Get, like, a thousand GitHub stars. (Same joke here.)
- Visit three different countries — and I just bought tickets to Iceland for the first weekend of March, so that’s only two to go.
- Publish an iOS app.
- Publish a book.
If I accomplish even just two of those things, I’ll be thrilled; if I accomplish none of them, but 2014 turns out to be half as great as 2013 has been, I’ll be ecstatic. What a crazy, perfect year.