Yes, procrastinated the year-end reflection to the new year again… Great.
Somehow year 2024 felt longer than usual, probably not because there were 29 days in February, but what was fulfilled in there that felt long-lasting.
Scrolling through my photo albums to piece together what I’ve done last year. It was quite a lot honestly, which explained that feeling. It was a year that was filled with a mixture of happiness, meaningfulness, gratefulness, and emptiness:
- Celebrated sister’s and cousin’s lovely weddings
- Travelled to Atlanta, NY (again), SF, LA, Montreal, Seattle
- Visited friends and my favorite teacher in Seattle
- Organized two successful and impactful events at work
- Hit 5-year work anniversary milestone, and got promoted
- Did ice plunge (and it was amazing!)
- Met the real LangLang in person
- Watched David Gillmore’s concert
- Missed a piece of myself
Can’t believe I’m saying this, but as an introvert, I’m starting to feel strongly addicted to socializing, like an undeniable drug. Feels so foggy to reason it from between “need” or “want”. Trying not to lose myself into the overthinking rabbit hole, instead, keep the chin up, shut the thoughts out of the scalp. Reminding myself that things are going in the right direction. What is remembered lives. How can you shine the light when you aren’t even whole yourself.
On the brighter side, gotta say the screenshots picture from treadmill running back in 2023 was pretty inspiring, as I did not focus on running at all last year. It resulted my stomach to get bigger again, only because I had pizza for a week in a roll one time. Ya, talk about how age can affect the body. What scared me more was that I noticed the meat being squeezed out under my chin every time when looking down. Not everything is negative, I did notice my chest has grown a bit from all the gym work, though not as obvious as how much my stomach has amplified. Also, towards the end of last year, I explored a few more sports: basketball, volleyball, and pickleball. Pickleball has become my favorite as it’s a bit easier to play comparing to tennis, plus playing badminton in my childhood helped as well. So this year, definitely more sports, if not feeling like running.
Last year, I also had the opportunity to learn more about myself, which was just what I needed for my self-exploring journey:
🧩 Puzzle 1, sometimes I get zoned out easily during a conversation, which I thought was because of the language barrier. Then I realized I had been like this for most of my life, just like I couldn’t stay focused in the classroom. I learned from a random chat with friends that it could be ADHD that was driving my imagination away, so just need to be a bit more self conscious in the future.
🧩 Puzzle 2, I knew the reason for staying on the phone late at night rather than sleeping was because the nighttime felt more richer to me, that I could finally take all time browsing aimlessly. But I came across a random video explaining the real reason is when a person didn’t get enough mental/emotional charge during the day but rather discharging themselves by pleasing others subconsciously. Yes, that’s another weak point, for spreading the light when not equipping enough. Couldn’t find the right word for 内耗, but guess Imposter Syndrome or Overthinking can do the work expressing how I felt. Think I’ve made tiny progress on that last year, but bringing more awareness to that should be on the new year’s list indeed.
🧩 Puzzle 3: How I react in a social event. Never reflected, but it seems my role changes depending on who are in the group. For the most part, I was a listener in a group conversation. Is that what I wanted? Yes? Sometimes no? Some of it was because I couldn’t follow along due to ADHD and didn’t feel right to ask to repeat. Being the quieter one doesn’t usually get the stage light, but how much does it really matter. Perhaps you may lose the ability of expressing smoothly, which hits to me occasionally. That matters for sure and needs to be fixed. On the other hand, when an introvert is surrounded by the same kind, it’d be a lot easier to share, sync, and resonate across the topics, even stand out promptly and help the conversation flow going, and therefore become the “extrovert” in the group. Tend to use those words carefully as though it helps us getting to know ourselves, but it may trap our mindset to the defined zone. Both sides have pros and cons, we shouldn’t frame ourselves on who we are so we can change and adapt to more pros and less cons from either category.
🧩 Puzzle 4: What makes me happy. It might sound cheesy, but I think I love seeing people or situations improve, especially when I’ve played a (major) role in making that happen. It can be both in personal life and work. To make an extreme example, seeing how AI has changed the world in so many different ways enlightens me, even though there’re risks and side effects to it, which can apply to most things. That’s how to we improve, learn, and grow. So I’m grateful of living in the same era as Sam Altman and Elon Musk. If I could make 0.001% of their impact, I would die peacefully and no regrets. So to me, the mental/spiritual enrichment is a lot more satisfying than material possessions, though that depends on the balance between expectation and reality just like the world may never be in an ideal peace phase.
Thanks to my friends who helped me find those puzzle pieces of myself. There’re a lot more waiting for me to explore and collect. With that said, listing some goals for this year:
- Do more sports
- More reading (again…)
- More ice plunge
- Maybe try skydiving???
- Love myself more:
- Avoid self-hatred
- Be less frugal to self, perhaps start with buying more PS5 games…
To anyone who’s reading this, hope you can find your puzzle pieces too. Building self-awareness is the beginning to a better you. Cheers to what’s exciting ahead, and let’s make this year splendid together! 🥂
Junshuai Feng 