2022 was a huge year for me both personally and professionally. Like last year I wanted to write a blog post about my thoughts on the year, review my goals from last year, and plan my goals for 2023.
2022’s goals
- âś… Read ten books - According to my StoryGraph, I ended up reading twelve books this year.
- ❌ Earn at least one dollar online - This one did not happen this year. I did some freelance work, but the goal I had in mind for myself was more akin to building a product or publishing a game on steam.
- âś… Climb a v7 - I ended up climbing the first climb marked v7 in early summer (May IIRC), although it was kind of soft. The first v7 I climbed that I felt was up to the grade, was shortly after in June.
- ❌ Write six blog posts - This one did not happen, although I have a pretty nice backlog of half-written posts.
- âś… Drop at least three Google products - This was probably my most successful goal. I was able to drop Andriod, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive. The only google service I am still using is Google Photos.
- ❌ Meditate every day for 5 minutes - This also did not happen… at all.
2022 Recap
Since it seems like every service under the sun is doing “Wraps” or “Recaps”, I thought I would add a few to this post.
Outside of those a ton of stuff happened this year. To start the year I took an incredible trip to Smith Rock in Oregon, where a friend and I got to multi-pitch for the very first time. This was an incredible experience and one that I’ve thought about a ton since. Shortly after that, my wife and I moved to Austin from Houston. Living in Austin has been an incredible change of pace, especially because outdoor rock climbing has become much more accessible. Since the weather has cooled down we have been able to go out and climb outside almost every weekend. After the move in late March, not too much happened until the summer, when I picked up my job search again. In early June we got a new dog named Roxy. For many reasons Roxy will go on to be the single biggest source of stress and joy I will experience for the rest of the year.
Honestly, after this point, the rest of the year flew by incredibly quickly. I started my new job on the first day of August, and have been loving it. My co-workers and manager are both amazing. The work is interesting, and I have the opportunity to learn a lot. I got into a groove working -> climbing -> working with the dogs -> playing games. August to November sped past me. It wasn’t until the holidays things started to slow down a bit.
Top Games of 2022
As you saw in the Recap section, I play a lot of games. I thought it’d be fun this year to add a list of some of my favorite games that were released or I played for the first time this year.
- Elden Ring - I’ve been a Souls-like fan for quite some time, so naturally Elden Ring Took number one. I love this game.
- God of War Ragnarok - An incredible ending to this story.
- Crystal Project - Imagine Bravely Default + Paper Mario + Path of Eile and you have this game. Very cool, and very awesome.
- Rimworld Biotech DLC - A natural extension of the already incredible base game, that only adds to the chaos of this game.
- Dwarf Fortress - I was able to see where Rimworld got so much of its inspiration. An incredible game, that I was thrilled to finally be able to play.
- Tiny Rogues — A charming retro roguelike, with tons of references to other popular games. Tons of content and fun builds. One of the best games to play when you only have 10-20mins.
My Goals for 2023
- Climb a v8 - This one should be doable as I have gotten more consistent with the v7s at my local gym. If I continue training and climbing as much as I have this should be a doable goal.
- Release a game on Steam - Similar to the “Make at least $1 online” from 2022, but this time it’s more focused on just getting a game onto Steam. I don’t care if anyone buys it, but I would like to learn more about the process and finish a game project.
- Drop Google Photos + Google Drive - I have a lot of my life backed up on these two cloud products from Google. I would like to untether myself from Google completely, and finding a solution that works 50% as seamlessly as these two do for my use cases would be amazing.
- Write AND publish six blog posts - Again, similar to the goal from last year, but this time I’m not going to try to force myself to adhere to a schedule. Instead, I’m going to just focus on writing about things I care about, in the hope of eventually getting something out there.
- Stretch more - I find myself sitting down for most of the day, as a result when I climb I’m incredibly stiff. So hopefully this year either via discipline or attending a yoga class, I’m hoping to stretch more. So these are the goals for 2023. Hopefully, I can do better than 50% this year.
Conclusion
2022 was a great year, and I’m hoping that 2023 can be even better. There are already some events I’m looking forward to, mainly another chance to multi-pitch and take a trip to Alaska this summer to do even more climbing/hiking.