Goodbye 2023, Hello 2024
Published:
I should have started writing this earlier, but anyway. In 2023, I made no meaningful progress towards anything I wanted to accomplish and I spent the year just running in the same place. I hope 2024 isn’t more of the same. I’m sick of procrastinating and I’m just publishing this so it might change as I move in my site’s older content.
Work and Money
I finally managed to get the system up and running to automate our processes. While they’re glad I’m around at work, I feel like I can do a far better job and I’m really in need of a higher salary. It kinda happened but things got rough towards the end of the year which seriously fucked up my plans.
Moneywise, it’s a lol. Have worked for two years and have nothing to show for it.
Damn.
Travel
I got to travel to Qatar, Philadelphia in the United States and South Africa. I was supposed to go to Georgia, but they didn’t let me in the country so I spent a week in Qatar instead. A shame since I was really looking forward to it. I do hope to go someday.
Qatar isn’t the place you’d spend more than 3 days, but I had a good time roving around the city using the Metro. Also got some good food including Korean Fried Chicken and BBQ 😋.
As for Philadelphia, I plan on writing about the trip properly in the coming weeks. While it’s a rough city, it has a lot of charm and history to make up for it. Though it’s horrendously unreliable and infrequent, I used public transport for all but 3 trips, reaching some surprisingly far flung places.
SA was the last trip and it just went wrong. I thought I’d have more money than I did which ruined the experience and I also got seriously ill to the point of needing surgery, leading to 2024 starting out as a huge pain in the ass. I mean that literally as you’ll soon find out in a later post.
I had the chance to go to Tenerife but I chickened out because the visa process required notaries, bank statements and letters from various government ministries. Maybe another time.
Writing and Coding
I’ve remade my site over and over again. I’ve also written a lot but I doubt anyone read any of it. Guess I’ve got a lot of undiagnosed anxiety.
I have a vision for this website to be a digital garden that evolves over time along with writing and various projects but I can never get around to it you know?
Health
Lol.
I was fine until the end of the year as I mentioned before.
Though my health was mostly fine, my mom nearly died. It was a really scary episode and it sucked seeing my mom incredibly weak and in lots of pain. She’s perfectly fine now and somehow in better health than she was before.
Bonus: Reviewing My 2022 Goals
In 2022, I had a bunch of goals I wanted to achieve. Here’s how it went:
| Goal | Success/Failure | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Look for a new job | Technically ✔️, Actually ❌ | I certainly looked but I’ve either had no responses or constant rejections |
| Start building wealth | Haha ❌ | Profligrate spending and shit constantly coming up got in the way. |
| …get better with money | Haha, again ❌ | See above. |
| Try making money outside my job | Yeah ❌ | I was too lazy and it seems really hard |
| Get back to creating and putting it out | 〰️Kinda? | A lot of making but nothing was really published for long |
| …for my blog | ✔️ | I did write but I kept remaking my personal website over and over again |
| …for my site projects | ✔️(barely) | Does my website and bikeshedding a project count? |
| …for online publications | ❌ | My cope is that paying online publications is a ZIRP1 and the money dried up but I didn’t really try. I have a topic in mind though |
| Get better at my current job | 〰️ | They appreciate my work but there’s so much more room for improvement |
| Travel | 〰️ | Not to all the placed I planned to, but I did get to go somewhere outta Zim. |
| …to USA | ✔️ | I got to go to Philly. More on that in the future. |
| …to South Africa | ✔️ | Yeah but I had no money and I was sick so it sucked |
| …to Tanzania | ❌ | Didn’t plan for it |
| …to the Philippines | ❌ | Didn’t plan for it |
| …to Georgia | ❌ | They didn’t let me enter the country and they didn’t tell me why. I’ll try again another time. |
| …to Qatar | ✔️ | Didn’t plan for it since I wanted to go to Georgia, but 🤷🏾♂️ |
7/16—Barley failed which is technically not as bad as I thought it would be but it’s abysmal.
Again I ask,
Is it worth making goals for 2023?
to which the answer is again
Probably not, but I’ll try to anyway.
Plans for 2024
While I didn’t accomplish much in 2023, let alone what I had planned to, in 2024 I hope to:
- Stop bike shedding my personal site and focus on writing and other projects.
- Two things I plan to write will be really embarassing—one on the thing that led me to getting surgery and the other is how I failed to become a programmer.
- Look for a new job—$400/month is a joke and there’s so much more I could be doing in life. I have gotten nothing but ghosting and rejections from the 100 applications I’ve posted so far. I guess I need a new approach. If you wanna help, here’s my resume.
- Take career development seriously. Right now I feel like I’m just droning at my job and I haven’t really pushed myself to learn new things. I’m also going to give this programming thing a serious shot and get a job.
- Visit Vietnam. It’s the only place I’ll probably be able to travel to this year. Won’t trick myself in planning more than this.
- Take my health and fitness seriously I’m an incredible fat ass and while it hasn’t caused me any health problems yet, I can’t keep treating myself like this. I also want to feel like I have some life in me.
- Become more thoughtful I feel like I keep trying to distract myself in order to avoid the hard work of having to think through my feeling and experiences. I do hope to give more time to this this year.
- Tidy up my digital life It’s a mess that I really need to clean up. Emails, files, applications—the whole lot.
- Actually get good with money This means a lot but mainly spending meaningfully, being on top of things financially so nothing is a suprise, being prepared for emergencies (like a car breakdown or medical bills insurance refuse to pay) and saving for retirement (which is hard to do from a shithole country2).
Doesn’t seem too daunting but there’s a lot to this list. Here’s hoping that I can be more successful at these goals this time around.
Zero interest rate phenomenon [PAYWALL, but the preview has enough context]. Things that aren’t really profitable but are propped up by easy money enabled by loose monetary policy enacted by most developed countries post Great Recession. ↩︎
There’s a big issue where young people feel as if they’ll never retire and that pension systems won’t be around for them. Welp, retirement is a very recent thing as previously your options where either to be super rich, be taken care of by family or work until you croak or physically can’t and croak faster. There’s a lot going onto this but basically the assumptions that led to “retirement” don’t hold anymore. Not sure how to solve it. ↩︎