Year in Review 2022

The tradition continues with my third year in a row. I wanted to start including how long I spent on each habit, but my college courses have been taking a lot of my time. Instead, this will mostly be looking at how things have changed in the last three years. One piece of data that I have lost is my heart rate during exercising. I've switched trackers from Fitbit to the Oura Ring. What they lack in fitness tracking they make up in sleep tracking, which is very important to me since I suck at sleeping. They are getting better though and hopefully, 2023 will have more data around fitness.

First, my habit breakdown for 2022, it is still in the three categories of Mind, Body, and Spirit (Education, Exercise, Meditation). This has been a mind-heavy year and the other two categories have suffered. Also, my education has become a lot less diverse as it's mostly just doing class work. I graduate in the spring, so we should see the diversity of how I'm learning to pick back up, as well as my exercise and meditation habits.

Overall I'm happy with last year's progress as I've switched from my undergrad strategy of procrastinating and then binge homework to the much more enjoyable "do a little bit everyday" strategy.

All Time

I'm honestly surprised how little covid affect my exercise routine when the yoga studio shut down I picked up running, and when I got shin splints the yoga studio opened back up. The winter of 2020 was the only real-time my exercise habits completely fell apart. I still don't lift nearly enough weights and that's my main fitness goal for 2023 I do need to stop running though, the impact is too much for my shins and knees.

2022

Oura Ring Tracking

These scores were generated by Oura based on their algorithms. My timing is the least consistent by far which is when I go to sleep and wake up.

  • Stay Active: Do I move around often, or am I sedentary throughout the day
  • Move Every Hour: Do I move a little bit every hour
  • Meet Daily Targets: Do I meet my daily step/activity goals
  • Training Frequency: Do I get to medium or high intensity workouts 3-4 times a week
  • Training Volume: Like Training Frequency but measures minutes instead of instances
  • Rem Sleep: Do I get my daily required REM sleep
  • Deep Sleep: Do I get my daily required Deep sleep
  • Sleep Efficiency: How often am I awake in bed vs being asleep in bed
  • Restfulness: How often I wake up during sleep. Basically how often does the dog need to go potty.
  • Latency: How long it takes to go from lying in bed to sleeping
  • Timing: Do I go to be and wake up at the same time every day

Since may I've walked about 975 miles, which is about the distance from Chicago to Orlando.

A lot more books and a lot fewer podcasts. And this does not include re-reads which was probably about 40hrs but audible is terrible at tracking listing time so that's not included.

Audio Books Read

Finally the books I've read.
First the nonfiction:

I'm still going through the wealth of nations but I've finished the first "book" in it. Surprisingly approachable although some of the languages are pretty archaic.

#Activism continues my interest in how social media shapes different political movements. It was pretty good, but for anyone interested in the subject Twitter and Tear gas is better.

Not included in the picture (because audible is so hard to work with) This is not Propaganda that is very relevant to today's climate. It's about how Russian Propaganda at least used to work (they have changed their media tactics since the war.) Written by a Ukrainian-British man Matthew Waterson who had a very interesting educational upbringing.

The rest were alright. I wanted to like the Stranger more, and Economics in one lesson is basically a "Neo-con world view" but it's a good book for that purpose.


Fiction:

Brandon Sanderson is always great, loved the new Wax and Wayne. I also re-read all of Era 2 for Mistborn to prepare for the new book.

The three body problem is one of the strangest books I've read in a long time. I really liked the scientific concepts and the overall trajectory of the books. It felt very Asimov. But they had the strangest b-plots of any book I've read. Including a long section about a failed academic who takes up writing and writes a fictional character so real he needs to break up with his girlfriend because he is cheating on her with this character. Including going on dates, and drinking wine with her, it was very strange. But that being said I love the A plots in all the books, they just get a little distracted sometimes.

Jade Wars is just good writing. An urban fantasy about a tribal society with a valuable resource that needs to integrate into a new and emerging global society. It's character-driven, around a single family as the balance between tradition and what is needed to survive in a modern world. Definitely not a metaphor for anything that's happened in the last 100 years.

Lastly, the Book of the Ice takes place in the same world as The Book of the Ancestor. I don't think it was quite as good as The Book of the Ancestor, but he pushed the "Sufficently advance science looks like magic" theme much farther in this series and I really loved it. Almost all of the questions raised in the first series have been asnwered here, except for a few technical ones and is a great addtion to this world.