To Be Determined

This is the second yearly report I have written and publicly published, inspired by James Clear’s.

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This year was a whirlwind. Last year, I took on some big projects and tried a lot of new things, but it somewhat pales in comparison to this year.

There were some important things that happened in the world this year too, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing conflict, the historic Inflation Reduction Act was passed to address climate change & infrastructure, the blockchain bubble popped, and microplastics were detected in human blood for the first time. We also got the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope and saw deeper into the universe than ever before, smashed a satellite into an asteroid to move it, and we took a picture of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Scientists made a net energy gain with fusion and many coral reefs seem to be recovering.

I remained an eager observer as I navigated the changes of my own life. I feel that I met all of my goals for the year to a significant extent and I pushed myself beyond my comfort zone in several ways in 2022. I certainly explored more in 2022 than I probably ever have. There was a lot that happened this year – a lot to do – but I felt I was able to be ~in the moment~ more often than I ever have been. In 2023, I hope to establish new rhythms and grow while maintaining intimate connections with the best parts of my past.

Habits in 2022

Events or actions that spanned months across my year.

Good

• I finished college with a degree and a certificate. In my last semester of undergraduate at UT Austin, I worked as a researcher on an orbital debris project with Dr. Moriba Jah and built a lunar ISRU prototype for my senior design project. I also worked part-time as a machine learning engineer at Slingshot Aerospace, a space situational awareness startup, and learned a ton.
• I took a record number of vacation days (~120) and explored 8 countries (Europe & North America) by plane, train, bus, car, boat, canoe, & foot with some of my favorite people.
• I started a full-time job (a first for me) as an Aerospace Engineer after moving to Seattle, WA with my good friend Dave K.
• In Seattle, I began seriously volunteering my time to the community at non-profits, particularly focused on nature conservation and youth homelessness.
• I wrote 12 posts for my blog within the year, after playing some major catch-up in the final months. I also read 12 books, Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie was a highlight.
• I took the time this year to explore presence and spirituality a bit – I began reading up on Buddhism and meditated every single day for the first half of the year (then fell off a bit, whoops). I also started reading a lot of poetry.
• I took a 1.5 second video (almost) every single day this year and stitched them together in a 9 minute, 7 second compilation. It’s awesome.
• I grew and guarded relationships, even from a distance, by making an effort to call family and friends at least once per week.
• I exercised as much as I could, though there were some long stretches on vacation were I didn’t. I ran 357 miles and biked 188 miles this year, mostly in the first two months of the year when I was marathon training. I hit some major achievements this year though: a 3:47 Austin Marathon, some time off, and I’m now heavier & stronger than I’ve ever been with a 3×12 195 lbs squat.

Bad

• I’m on my phone a lot, I averaged about 4 hours/week. Last year, I had about this average and put it in the “Ugly” category. This amount of time is not a great thing, but it seems like on the worst days, I’m doing about 1.5 hours of social media. Most of the other time is music, browsing, texting, or mapping. I typically do a good job of sticking to my 35 minute socials limit and I am very much able to control my phone use when around other people. It remains a work in progress.
• I dealt with a lot more anxiety this year than I ever have before, so I’m working on developing tools to deal with it.
• I suppose I could have set more aggressive goals for myself – looking back at my goals for growth in 2022, I was able to achieve them all to some degree.

Ugly

• I moved away from my girlfriend of several years for a job. We do long-distance now.

Highlights in 2022

• I celebrated the New Year in Seacrest, Florida on beautiful Rosemary Beach with my family.
• My college friends and I road-tripped out to Big Bend National Park where we hiked the scenic South Rim, Balanced Rock, and Lost Mine trails, ate lunch along the Rio Grande’s canyons, and took a dip in some hot springs. We stayed in a scenic, isolated AirBnb in Terlingua.
• I played disc golf at every course in Austin with one of my roommates, Todd (except for Live Oak Brewing, somehow missed that one).
• My girlfriend Sara and I caught our friend’s band, Yardsale!, a few times in the spring at breweries in Austin and opening for COIN. She took me to see Bad Suns and Kid Bloom, my two favorite artists, at Stubbs. I also got to see Little Image and Sports & Husbands at a local bar. Later on in the semester, we got to see Wallows live at Stubbs too!
• It snowed and froze for consecutive days in Austin again around Valentine’s Day, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Winter Storm Uri.
• Sara and I went to a lot of coffee shops, farmers markets, & plant shops in the Spring Semester and we finally made it the Blanton Art Museum.
• I ran the Austin Marathon with a lot of my good friends and support from even more. I finished with a 3:47.
• I celebrated Texas Independence Day with the Tejas Club at a lovely brunch with my date and favorite professor. We sang the university president a serenade.
• My roommates and I backpacked through the Superstition Wilderness in Arizona for 3 days. Not much beats the rugged, colorful beauty of Arizona.
• Sara and I went to the sculpture park at Laguna Gloria and I frequented to Barton Springs with her and friends.
• I finally got somewhere with my machine learning projects for space situational awareness and presented my results at my company and to my research supervisor.
• Tejas had our annual crawfish boil, and we went to Lake Travis for a day. I worked on my tan.
• I got COVID-19 for the first time (from the lake day..) and gave it to Sara. We hung out with her cats in quarantine.
• I went apartment hunting with my future roommate, Dave, in Seattle and ate a lot of good fish.
• I took graduation photos (twice) and graduated on a stormy night.
• Back in Dallas, I hung out with old high school friends, hit some golf balls, and went cliff jumping at Lake Whitney. I also got to see one of them get married.
• I flew to London and met up with some family living there. Their apartment was dreamy and the jet lag was quite something.
• In Vienna, I visited the Naturhistorisches Museum, the Belvedere Palace, and I had some stellar coffee. I barely missed a Vienna Philharmonic solstice concert at Schönbrunn Palace, met up with my friend Sharif, and made some Dutch and Norwegian friends out clubbing. Heard some Mozart too.
• Prague was a fairytale of winding streets and endless spires. Sharif and I walked the Charles Bridge, took in the cathedrals, and napped along River Vltava. We drank a lot of Pilsner.
• In Germany, we met up with our college friend who was visiting German family. With our trusty translator, we hiked in the Alps, saw Neuschwanstein Castle, ate lots of sausage and drank lots of beer, clubbed in Berlin for days, and had terrible luck on the Deutsche Bahn. I took in lots of architecture, including Mies van der Rohe, and war memorials. The Jewish Museum in Berlin was a stunning and emotional experience.
• In Norway, some friends picked us up in Oslo and gave us a midnight tour of the city, including Aker Brygge. In the daytime, we visited the Royal Palace and went swimming at Sørenga. We boarded the Bergansbanen , considered to be one of the most beautiful train rides in the world, and shot at 100 mph through Norway’s breathtaking fjords.
• Bergen, Norway offered hikes, breathtaking sunsets, midnight McDonalds, and quiet stave churches. We took a boat tour, and I swam in a chilly fjord. It was uncannily sunny the days we were in Norway.
• In Amsterdam, I ate some stoopwafel and drank even more coffee. Sharif and I met up with our friend, Jop, after a trip to the Van Gogh Museum. Jop showed us the Dutch coast and shared a fantastic barbeque dinner with his family at home. I got a really, really good haircut at a place near the iconic Zaanse Schans windmills.
• Back in London, I met up with a lot of friends for a week. We had a fancy dinner at Boodles, sang Karaoke, and saw all the sights, including Stonehenge and Tate Modern. The tennis fans among us went to see some of Wimbledon.
• I recharged in Dallas for a few days, and then headed up to St. Paul, Minnesota to meet a few buddies to canoe for a week in the Canadian Quetico Wilderness. We had absolutely gorgeous weather, ate wild berries, and took in the stillness of the lakes. Over 6 days, we only saw one other group. Shoutout to Barry Giles for the canoe and beer.
• I packed up all of my stuff in Austin and shipped it off to Seattle. A few old roommates of two years hung out at home for the last time.
• I met up with Sara in Seattle and crashed with some of her family friends at their gorgeous home on the Sound. We paddle-boarded, hiked Lake Serene, walked around downtown, and ate good food.
• Sara and I went to Mexico City and crashed with her father in Roma Norte. We ate street tacos, watched rom coms, and took in Rivera’s murals on the walls of Secretaría de Educación Pública.
• In Puerto Vallarta, Sara and I lounged on several beaches, including those on the surf town Sayulita for a few days. We ate even more tacos, watched some sea turtles freedom run to the surf, and saw some fantastic lightning. Conchas Chinas is a good beach, but Colomitos is a hidden gem.
• I finally actually moved to Seattle and unpacked all of my stuff. I bought a lot of indoor plants and officially started my job as an aerospace engineer.
• I took in Discovery and Seward park and went on a bunch of day hikes, including Rattlesnake Ledge, Mount Teneriffe (the steep way), Mailbox (also the steep way), and the breathtaking 21-mile Enchantments Traverse. Should have brought my headlamp for that one.
• I went camping on the Oregon coast while Dave surfed at Oswald West State Park.
• I volunteered on several reforesting efforts, at the Museum of Flight, food pantry, and at a homeless shelter.
• I visited Austin for a little over a week and took Sara on several dinner dates to celebrate our anniversary. Recommend Lutie’s and Oseyo.
• I went out with several of my new Seattle friends for my birthday on a surprisingly snowy and cold night. We celebrated “Friendsgiving” in Seattle several times and went ice-skating, accident free!
• I went skiing at Snoqualmie for the first of hopefully many times.
• Dave and I published our first Zine. Email me if you want a copy. We also hosted a Christmas party for our friends and made everyone bring an ornament for our real Douglas Fir. I hung a 3D printed longhorn.
• I blitz-posted on my blog in December, averaging 2 posts a week, and hit a PR on squats.
• Seattle iced over the day before Christmas Eve and my flight home was cancelled. It was a very Facetime-Christmas.
• I made it home and celebrated a belated Christmas with my family, grandparents, and cousins back in Texas. I got to see old friends and play lots of pickleball and frisbee golf.

Growth in 2023

I am going into 2023 with 3 tenets I mind:

• Create
• Take risks
• No half-assing anything

The tenets I had in 2022 (consistency, relationships, actions not results) served me well, so I intend to hold to them as well. Towards the end of the year, I read Matthew McConaughey’s memoir Greenlights. In the book, he stresses being “less impressed, more involved.” I will be less impressed, less intimidated, less over-thinking. More involved.

In that spirit, here are some measurable items I’ve made for my 2023 self:

• Find a final placement role at my job that excites me & will reinforce a specific skill for my career.
• Get accepted into and begin a part-time graduate program.
• Practice more conscientious budgeting (spend has been ~14% higher than I want it to be).
• Take full advantage of the Seattle outdoorsman scene (mountaineering, etc).
• Continue talking to distant family and friends at least once a week.
• Craft more stuff (words, code, wood, acrylic. Whatever medium).

Thoughts

This year was a lot of change and moving around. It was an inflection point.

It was an intense internship & research, peppered with fun and celebration, graduation and months of travel all over the Western Hemisphere, a move across the country, a start to a career, and entirely new friends. It was a lot of fun and it was a lot.

Travel was a huge highlight. I was fortunate enough to have a ton of time to vacation and explore. I learned how much fun travel and adventure in new places can be, and I became significantly more comfortable being in completely new situations. I spent some time reflecting alone, but I spent much more time with others. It became even clearer to me how beautiful it is to share experiences with people and how meaningful it is to get to know someone well.

I spent a lot of time this year trying to understand what is fundamentally important to me. I’m not sure why this is such a hard thing to do. Maybe it is me, but it’s hard to imagine it’s truly easy for most. Maybe authenticity is so easily hidden behind social norms or the latest fad or the inertia of following a path like a standard American education. Perhaps it is because it’s a trade-off, long-term and short-term desires at such odds. It could be simply because the things that are important are difficult to pursue or even recognize.

For me, so far, it’s:

• Relationships
• Truth – being present & being honest
• Beauty – the natural world & creation
• Progress – being better than I was yesterday

And it’s avoiding focusing on the way that I am perceived by others.

I’m simultaneously quite excited and quite anxious about what the coming year has in store. 2022 presented me with a lot of changes, but I knew about them all well in advance. It is likely that 2023 has just as many changes in store for me as I continue to settle into new rhythms, but I can only guess what they might be. I’m incredibly lucky to have the people and healthy habits that I do in my life, though, and with their help, I will lean always into the present moment.