I turned 23 yesterday. It was cool.

I wanted to think about all the stuff I learned and did when I was 22. Looking through what I said I learned last year, I was kinda shocked how well it kept up: my love for Manhattans, stouts, Chipotle, Murakami, and Threes has only grown.

What did I do this year? What did I learn this year?

  • I started caring a lot more about technology and design.
  • I started going to a climbing gym. Climbing gyms are great. I’m pretty awful at climbing, but I’m less awful than I was six months ago, and even less awful than I was six days ago.
  • I figured out how to cook sous vide.
  • I figured out how to pronounce sous vide.
  • I fell in love with Ta-ku and Hemingway and Swift.
  • I made a lot of stuff! Like, I worked a lot. 1 Work, to me, is a weird thing – I think I’ve internalized the endorphin rush of productivity to the point where I feel too guilty to spend an evening without tinkering with a side project or working on a freelance thing. At some point, I think this crossed the line of “great work ethic” into “unhealthy workaholism”.
  • Since that last one sounded like a little bit of a downer, I should suffix it with this: I learned how to be really, really proud of the things I do. After a childhood 2 squandered more than it should have by Halo 2 et al, I can’t remember ever having so many days where I went to bed wholly excited about what I had done and what I’d be doing the next day.
  • I went to Stockholm and Bangkok and surprisingly did not die in either place.
  • I read a lot. I didn’t write enough.

But the number one thing I keep learning time and time again, is the same thing I wrote last year:

  • I was born into a tremendous, tremendous amount of luck, and it seems to increase at an incredible rate.

I’m going to leave my big resolutions for the end of this year, but if 22 was marked by learning how to work hard and produce results, I want 23 to be marked by learning how to keep healthy. (Which, tbh, will be a lot of hard work in of itself. But at least I’m trying!) Balance is something I’ve never been good at, but I want to change that.

  1. While I’ve made a personal promise to not talk about ~~ the Amazon stuff ~~ for the foreseeable future, rest assured that I have never cried at my desk or been backstabbed by anonymous feedback. [return]
  2. I say “childhood” but I just bought Rocket League, so there’s a little bit of relapse going on here. [return]
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