A Recap for 2022

Time passes unbelievably fast and here comes the end of 2022! It has been a year with a lot of personal growth and I want to pay it a tribute with this brief post.

One big keyword of this year is sharing. I made 4 blood donations, 1 pint each. Recently I also learned if one’s body weight falls below 110 lbs they cannot donate anymore, which is a perfect excuse for me to not working further on weight loss :) This is something I will keep doing if not getting deferred for various reasons such as international travels, vaccinations, tattoos, etc. Also I came to notice there are two stray cats (brother and sister) in our neighborhood (later I learned they were born on the balcony of one of the households and abandoned by their mom, and they have lived together for more than 10 years in the neighborhood. They are feral cats and I guess this is why they have not been adopted. But the lost tip of one year suggests that at least the brother is neutered), and so I started feeding them. The sister is very alarmed and never approaches people easily. At your tiniest movement she will simply run away. After feeding them for over 2 months they would run to me when hearing me making the ‘meow meow’ sound. By sharing just a little cat food I got so much trust in return. How thankful I am!

The second keyword coming to mind is learning. Having spent so many years in school, at one moment I used to think after getting a doctorate degree the tough learning can at least pause a bit, which turned out horribly wrong. Learning was everywhere. My previous learning focus has been largely on statistics, or anything related to my profession of being a data scientist. However life is more than working, and also more than where I am or what I do. The whole year of turmoil that happened in China tossed my mood up and down, and it is in books that I found some comfort and peace.

Next I want to mention adapting. Quoting the Count in A Gentleman in Moscow,

if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.

While I dislike this male-centered tone of this quote, I agree with its spirit. However mastering is not equivalent to total control as one’s capabilities has limitations. I adapted a lot. For example shifting my schedule to a morning person’s, waking up at 6am, and falling asleep around 11pm. This gave me both convenience with work (for meeting EMEA folks), and the opportunity to appreciate the morning tranquility I did not before.

I would not be myself if not mentioning disciplining. Over the last year I had multiple fitness goals for myself - walking for 10k steps per day, run 260 miles in a year, and lowering bodyfat percentage, etc. These did take some self-discipline as there are for sure times when one gets lazy and does not want to get out of the bed. I got super proud when I realized I achieved them all.

Also outreaching and pushing back. I got better at protecting my boundaries while also grew the courage to trust people. Being less hesistant with personal matters makes things lighter and easier. I very much enjoyed being blunt honest.

There are so many remaining keywords I have not yet covered. Alas! I will end this post here for now. In a year, I will revisit this post, and see if I was able to carry these good things for another year.