A full week has gone by in February and here comes my first ever post for 2024. We have those moments. This blogpost is inspired by none other than My 2022, a Retrospective.

On my Focus Time

Compared to 2022, my Forest trees were 600 fewer, an expected result considering I stopped recording my ‘Work’ focus hours in January 2023. However, comparing my Writing focus stats in 2022 and 2023, there was a significant improvement. Remembering to use the Forest app was definitely a factor but more significant than that was the period I spent working on a personal writing project which I will get into in the On Writing section of this post.

On Language Learning and Proficiency

What better way to sum up the culmination of my language learning but with this post, When in Japan: Overcoming the Language Barrier . In here, I summed up what I thought I should focus on. TLDR version: work on recognizing Kanji and learning business expressions. I had a humbling experience when I had several opportunities to speak with Japanese citizens.

On the other hand, my English proficiency, particularly speaking and vocabulary, was declining. I noticed how I groped for words to describe what I thought or felt. Not just once did I catch myself saying what I think without filters or the exact opposite, stuttering in a conversation, not knowing how to say what I wanted to say. I can’t stress enough how working from home has affected my language proficiency and that I usually use jargons for work. I will just have to consistently watch The Lord of the Rings, Young Sheldon, The Big Bang Theory and House and perhaps have more speaking exercises even when nobody is listening.

On Reading

The only stuff I read in 2023 were light novels. I may or may not write a post on the ones I actually finished and liked. I tried to return to actual books sometime in May last year but my attention wasn’t in it. I even received a thin book from a good friend in June which I haven’t opened yet. Suffice it to say that my all-time novel reading stats was the lowest last year.

I intend to change that. In January of 2024, I finished rereading Tolkien’s The Hobbit– 18 years since I first read it in my college library, 15 years since I got my own copy. I’m currently rereading The Fellowship of the Ring. Though a decline in my reading speed is observable, I intend to power through.

On Writing

I wrote emails and user stories was what I told myself to justify my lack of writing outputs last year, not unlike Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada when she made excuses to her father during their dinner conversation.

In my ten years in WordPress, my 2023 total posts was the smallest number. Far from getting all gloomy about it, I was actually more inspired. Ever since I defined what form of writing I wanted to improve on and measure, I cared less and less about the ‘content-creation’ aspect or that “I have to post or else my view count will decline.” Seeing the total number of words in my 10 years worth of blogposts reshaped my perspective: I may be able to write my next 100,000-word novel in the next decade. I recalibrated around October when I was preparing for my personal NaNoWriMo project — and no, I didn’t stress about hitting the 50k word count in a month.

On Traveling

This category is one of the core reasons I decided to exert more energy in documenting my life through videos. In 2023, I managed to go to several amazing places. Alas, with my current writing output speed, I wasn’t able to blog about any of them save for that one measly post. Once I’m more confident, I’m going to share the vlog channel I created last year. For now, I’m enjoying the anonymity it provides.

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In all honesty, I didn’t even realize that I already spent ten years in this platform until I checked my writing stats. That’s indeed a wake up call to shake things up a little bit.

Until my next retrospective, I remain,