What have you achieved this year? 2023 edition

[The_J]

Seems we didn't really have a "new year's resolutions" thread last year, although Narz asked for our goals this year (link to my goals).
I had not really put down much, which was more or less achieved.

• I added some weight in the gym, but it turns out only 10 kg for squat and deadlift from last year. I thought it was 20.
• My own weight is more or less stable, although I had aimed to reduce it a bit
• I ran a 10k in personal record time (10.55 km in 59.01 minutes)
• Managed to figure out one of my allergies (Kiwis), and am doing better now
• I found a new job, as I got bored with my old one. Now not anymore in academia, but in drug regulatory affairs. Let's see if that will be interesting. I have already attended 2 meetings on European level, and will give input this year for proposed future regulations of the current most hyped tech topic... so I think career-wise this is well on track . Social interactions at work are still lacking though, but it has just been one month.
• Published an article in a good journal (proud of that one), have been co-author on 3 more, and another one with me as main author will probably be accepted this month.
• I went to quite some concerts, and made a bucket list for bands to see
• Won a price at our pub quiz (we were 3rd, but teams #1+2 had too many members), and made another time a decent place (shared 4th out of 24)
• I visited 3 friends in Denmark, had a great time
• Managed to keep up with the majority of my friends, although I need to invest coming year a bit more into 2-3 of these friendships. I lost one friend, but I fully blame her
• we ran a raffle here at the forum, had a good April Fool's joke, and had contact with some devs and some academic researchers. And the forum is still alive, despite no Civ7! We also got a Mastodon account running, as well as an Instagram one, but lost access to our Twitter. Social media was overall successful.
• nothing new on the dating side, had 2 crappy dates, and that's it

So... besides the job all more or less uneventful/as expected.

 

[Synobun]

I forgot about that thread. Here is what I posted there.

Right now, I have no goals except to make it through the next month. I reckon this year will be generic goals like "lose a little more weight" and "become debt free" or, if not debt free, in debt for a good reason rather than due to passivity.

Possibly: traveling somewhere, and attending my first-ever work conference.

I'm also finally seeing a specialist who actually knows about my health conditions, and who will be willing to prescribe treatments for me, but I hesitate to put this as a goal for the year. Early in my 20s, I made finding help for my health the centerpiece of my plans, and it was ruinous and a ginormous waste of time.

I didn't travel (sort of) and did not attend that work conference. I instead spent my birthday at a cabin out in nature, which was kind of big. I don't consider it an achievement though, since I was involved in very little regarding it coming to pass, and I was out of commission for most of it as well. My friend had pneumonia, and it inevitably infected me as well. Of the three days there, I could only function for the first day. The rest was spent in bed.

Did see that specialist, did start medication that helped physically. But he's become largely absent and moving forward has stalled indefinitely. I'm also stagnating in the physical rehab and seeing no gains in mental acuity. I'm still stuck at a barely functional level on that front. The physical improvements, also, have not had much of an effect on big-picture health outcomes, and those continue to be as worrisome as they've been the past years.

Technically, I didn't lose more weight. I relapsed with the binge eating early in the year and regained a dozen pounds or so. I did manage to pause that around May/June, and have since hovered at a 5-10-pound loss from the relapse regain. My weight is a little bit above where I was at my lowest pre-surgery last year. That said, I have also gained a significant (to me) amount of muscle this year, so the fat loss isn't represented in my weight. All of my clothes are pretty loose on me now and my posture/gait is better.

My debt ballooned because of clients that ghosted me. I got approved for 10k back in January and bought a new phone and a PC, and also paid for my income tax since it was significantly more than what I was originally told it would be. But from there I ended up needing to spend 3-4k of it on rent/bills because people decided this year that paying for services rendered is no longer cool. Never been a big problem for me in the past, but it's certainly screwed me over tremendously this year. As a result, my debt went from ~1.5k to ~11k, and at least half of it is debt I should not be in. I'm fine with the PC debt, but the rest shouldn't exist. Nothing to do about it except move on and pay it down when I can, though.

 

[Caesar of Bread]

Positives:
- Found out I was bi
- Had fun at Philmont for the first of many times
- Became Eagle Scout
- Joined the Order of the Arrow
- Graduated 8th grade
- Made 1 or 2 friends
Negatives:
- Got rejected 8 times
- Got bullied
- Became a freshman
- Have to go to a Catholic school
- Got scammed
- Molested
either the best or worst year so far

 

[amadeus]

I don‘t know, nothing
I think I got closer to self-actualization
or further away
still not sure
still here
gotta find something worthwhile
not that motivated though
how can you both want to do something and not want to
wacky innit

 

[Theov]

What are your studying plans? Learning (relatively) later on in life can be awesome ^^

I'm twice the age of my classmates
I'm still thinking whether to do a master after my bachelor or not. If I can do it in one year, I might do it.

 

[bene_legionary]

It seems like the goals I had in this post had some work done towards them;
1. I've got my learners' permit, but being at boarding school has made it hard to find the right time for practicing (and driving lessons are both expensive and hard to schedule in the right times, especially for scarce manual instructors). I also did not have access to a manual car; this is about to change for good
2. For about 2 months I had a good habit of doing spanish flashcards for vocabulary I picked up in class and did not recognise. It also seems like I am finally overcoming getting all the past tenses mixed up, and I am getting to future tenses now. Unfortunately, I just don't ever do my homework...
3. Did not learn how to code. It's probably not for me, and I'm fine with this.
4. Eh, I kinda got to know more people? This year I reconnected with my boarding house (I hadn't been staying there for two years and it was awkward not knowing them until this year) but I have not really made new friends.

 

[Quintillus]

Not a lot compared to some of the recent years... still probably a better year than 2020, but 2021 and 2022 were definitely better, as were the 2016 - 2019 period.

Negatives

I was working on a team maintaining a fairly common suite of digital library software, but the whole team got let go, managers and up as well, so career-wise the year hasn't gone as well as hoped. I knew there were some problems at that place but I didn't realize just how bad they were. It's a bummer too because from a societal impact standpoint, it's probably the second-most-positive piece of software I've worked on professionally, and the first one was my first job out of school so my impact on it was minimal. But management didn't know how to run a software company in a sustainable fashion, and from what the one long-timer who was still there said, that had been the case for a long time. Hopefully the library Smellincoffee works at is using or considering competing products to the one I worked on.

Spoiler Career Rant :

Now I'm considering switching careers altogether. I'm good at what I do, but especially post-pandemic the job market just does not align very well with what I'm looking for. Too many companies that have gone remote (which doesn't work for me, I need to be around people), too many companies want the equivalent of electricians who are also plumbers, when in reality there are good reasons that most tradespeople are one or the other. I mean, if your hot tub were leaking water everywhere, would you hire an electrician to come fix it? If you called one, would they want to come work on it? But many executives who don't fix hot tubs themselves think it would be great if their company just told their electricians that now they were going to fix hot tubs too, and they didn't have to find those elusive plumbers to add to their staff.

(For those in the industry, I'm referring to DevOps, the unhappy marriage of two jobs into one, that theoretically means you can do everything yourself and don't have to wait on someone else, but in reality often means you're wasting half of more of your time working in the half of it that you aren't very good at. And executives think that type of arrangement will save them money...)

In terms of physical activities, this year was still probably my third-or-fourth best ever after 2022, 2021, and perhaps 2020, but I managed to get injured more, including separate injuries to each knee that took months and weeks to recover from, respectively. The first was more annoying and mildly painful than limiting, but the second significantly limited my preferred form of exercise. Along with some more minor aches and pains, it's helped me better appreciate the years when that hasn't been the case.

Philosophy

If I were a character in a novel, this is where I would wax poetic wondering if those injuries were the first signs of no longer being young. Or is that sign your CFC membership being old enough to drive in your country? Or the occasional gray hair that your friend of the same age is now sporting? Or that friends younger than you are talking about how they aren't so spry as they used to be anymore?

Basically my point is, if you're one of the more-young-relative-to-me posters on the forum, go spend some time outside and see if you like it while you still have the health to do so. Not just sitting in a chair or on a beach, but something active. Civ will still be here when you get back. I was fortunate enough to do so while I still have enough vim and vigor to keep up with the 20-somethings, but if it weren't for the encouragement of some friends, who knows whether I would have?

Positives

I did make it to a few more states this year, including some really beautiful areas, and reconnected with some long-lost relatives, so that was good. Also reconnected with a couple friends from the before times on that trip, which was fun, and met a couple of wild moose, which was unexpected for both me and for them.

I've yet to make a warpus-like thread about my travels but have been tempted to at times. The locations are less exotic than his, but focused on parts of the U.S. that few people travel to... places that I wouldn't have thought to travel to myself five years ago.

Also have become halfway proficient at skiing, which was not responsible for any of this year's injuries, although I probably forgot most of what I learned over the summer. A winter goal is to take that up to fully proficient. Even made some new friends on the slopes, which is good as too many of the old friends have moved out of state over the years.

 

[Snerk]

I'm thirty seven! I'm not old!

I'm 36 and I'm old af

I'm twice the age of my classmates
I'm still thinking whether to do a master after my bachelor or not. If I can do it in one year, I might do it.

I'm older than my fellow students too but luckily the kids are alright. It's not bad at all. It's slightly annoying when the teachers are younger than me but OK, I deal. My plan is to pursue a master too but I'll need more than a year completing it.

 

[r16]

mysterious ways of CFC !? As ı was closing this page while not logged in it sent me to the 2019 version , which indeed turns out to be the F-84 year . Just like the way ı was once ranting on something and it led me directly to Civ III downloads page for a New Turkey era drone . Like if ı ever want a drone ı will copy one from Star Wars or something .

edit: Anyone but an idiot would have deduced in 5 seconds that my finger touched on the link below as it was on its way to the bottom of the screen , but , yes , ı am an idiot .

 

[Kyriakos]

You guys speak of 36 and 37 being old, without minding at all that the forum also has people in the age of @Arakhor

(which is my age too But I am past midlife crisis, fortunately)

As @warpus would say, "on the wrong side of 40" (44 in our case).

 

[Tee Kay]

I went back to therapy. My country's government has cut the number of subsidised counselling sessions I'm eligible for, but I felt I got a lot out of the sessions that I was able to afford. My partner noticed an improvement for the better. I'm communicating better, less quick to self-harm, less prone to bouts of paralysing fear. My thought patterns and learned behaviours make more sense.

Travelled to Perth, Adelaide a couple of times, and various places more locally. Mum came over to visit, I showed her around, we talked, it was good, better than I'd hoped for.

I lost 5kg and maintained it. Doctor's orders, I had to take it seriously. Still, for maybe the first time in my life I actually maybe sort of a little bit like how I look????????? It's so weird

I cared less about making art to be good, which meant I created more.

Progressing in my career. Glacially, with no wage increase, and no prospect of promotion, but I'm doing more complex work and it's become more enjoyable. After 2 ½ I'm finally starting to have an idea of what I want from the job and what would make my look for another.

Next year's challenge would be to take that and infuse my day-to-day with some kind of purpose or direction. This year there was too much of drifting rudderlessly in space and time, lots of lazy afternoons doomscrolling, not because I'm not bursting with energy to do other things, anything else, but because my mind is scattered and gets pulled in all directions all at once all the time, like in that Michelle Yeoh movie. Also I would like to lose an additional 5kg.

 

[Hygro]

Unfortunately, the giant list of last year's achievements is not repeated this year. I, in fact, have nothing to put here this time. It was a year of survival. Nothing more. I suffered colossal setbacks in every aspect of my life. Everything has fallen apart in incredible ways, and there is no real hope of that changing. It's been a long, terrible year of loss.

It does seem like last year was an enormous blip. Life has since dutifully corrected the timeline.

Trust in the sawtooth

 

[Gori the Grey]

As @warpus would say, "on the wrong side of 40"

Then you get on the "wrong side of 50" and you're just grateful to wake up each day on the right side of the grave.*

*

Spoiler :

The outside

 

[Josu]

Fostered a 9 years old girl.
Biggest challenge I had ever had and probably that I will have. We will keep struggling whatever happens

 

[Smellincoffee]

I'm 36 and I'm old af

I'm older than my fellow students too but luckily the kids are alright. It's not bad at all. It's slightly annoying when the teachers are younger than me but OK, I deal. My plan is to pursue a master too but I'll need more than a year completing it.

I was making a little Monty Python joke there. ;-) I imagine a bachelor's definitely skews more young. In my classes to date, people have been all over the place, age wise: mid-twenties to senior citizens. One guy must have been pushing seventy but was pursuing the degree to help him better manage the museum he's director over. I assumed that having worked in a library for ten years, I'd be ahead of the class -- but no, over half the class is already involved with library work.

 

[Birdjaguar]

One guy must have been pushing seventy

Tread lightly.......

 

[Kyriakos]

Video filming for the new seminar done.
Just lay back and wait for the € to flow in - a step towards restoring my oligarchic background

I think I may also create a fourth one, but not on literature. But first a half-a-year break is in order.

 

[Angst]

- finally moved and got more help (not giving details here, at least not for this thread)
- chore doing efficiency has improved from nil to like 20%
- current book is now some ~300 loose pages, "finished" manuscript itself is ~120, folder with potential loose entries has like 300 files. so basically book progress

i think that's about it

 

[GenMarshall]

Seems we didn't really have a "new year's resolutions" thread last year, although Narz asked for our goals this year (link to my goals)...

I volunteer @Kyriakos to make the thread .

 

[Kyriakos]

I volunteer @Kyriakos to make the thread .

I can't be that greedy ^^ Why don't you start it?