My 2024 Annual Review

Dec 31

Turning 24 this year (by the way, loving this whole “age matching the calendar year” thing, makes life a lot easier) was CRAZY. This was the first time I felt a disconnect between my internal self perception and my age. I do not feel 24. It’s borderline mid-20s, and I don’t even know if I can say I’m in my early 20s anymore. Crazy. This year had many new experiences, but what year doesn’t? Lots of change, grief, inward analysis, and more to touch on here. Let’s dive in…

Like last year, the questions I’ll be answering in this review are:

What went well this year?
What didn’t go so well this year?
What did I learn this year?

As well as the obligatory photo highlight reel.

1. What went well this year?

Social Confidence. Last year, in the “What didn’t go so well this year?” section, social anxiety made it’s debut appearance. I don’t really know what made social anxiety snowball so much over the last two years, but it’s definitely made it’s way to the forefront of my mind in terms of personal hurdles to address. I’m happy to say there has been a lot of progress this year by getting out of my comfort zone, taking initiative to make plans and start conversations, learning more about what I can improve on, making more friends, and building the connections that I’ve wanted to make despite how daunting it can be.

Screen Time. The majority of the time, social media apps are deleted off my phone and during those times, I only am able to check them on my laptop which makes it much easier to bypass the doomscrolling trap. There are still struggles here and there, and I hope to continue to break my ties to how addictive social media can be.

Concerts. Phil Wickham, AJR, and Twenty One Pilots all in the same year! I’m also proud to say I’ve done better with protecting my hearing, since this was a large concern of mine in the last year.

MixxedFit. I taught my first class in February, and taught a total of 15 classes in 2024! The easiest part was memorizing choreography and pre-cuing, the most fun part was putting together the playlists and dancing to the music I love so dearly (shoutout to Ku Lo Sa and Ride It), the hardest part was learning how to have an engaging instructor presence and getting comfortable with a microphone. It took about 7 classes for me to chill out and get comfortable speaking in between and during songs, and now I’d say I’m pretty comfortable! I also got to visit Lori (CEO of MixxedFit) at Studio MixxedFit in Tacoma and participate in her class!

Career. I was promoted to Analyst III in Q1 and got the opportunity to mentor as part of our summer internship program this year. I learned a lot with both of these opportunities, and I aim to continue the inertia of accelerated learning in my role by earning my CPCU. R&R was another success, similar to last year, and something I thoroughly enjoyed.

Traveling. Washington in March, Tennessee in August, Hawaii in September, and New Jersey & Pennsylvania in November!

Personal Fitness. Boxing piqued my interest earlier in the year and I invested in some boxing gloves and once again, got out of my comfort zone to beat up the punching bag that’s placed smack dab in the middle of the gym where everyone can see me. Like most people, I like practicing skills in privacy where I can look dumb and make mistakes and really zone in, so it’s a bit tricky doing it in front of people at the gym (I’ve had people come and make positive and encouraging comments to me as well, which is nice and I’m grateful for it! but it just confirms that people do see me there which is daunting). Still, I’ve really enjoyed learning how to box, and I’ve especially enjoyed doing pad training with Nate. Strength wise, I’ve increased my muscle mass this year and also defined my biceps, triceps, and delts.

YouTube & Patreon. I can’t believe I’m saying this… but I’m FINALLY making tutorials on Patreon again (thanks to Nate who helped me get MIDI stuff set up after I switched from Windows to Mac)! My “LUNCH” Billie Eilish guitar short also blew up on YouTube for some reason with over 20K views, and I could officially say it was successful because the official YouTube company account commented on my video!! My jaw dropped when I saw that.

2. What didn’t go so well this year?

Grief. This was a big one. It’s inevitable in someone’s lifetime, and there’s always more to come, but getting a taste of it this year was really, really difficult. Probably the most emotionally difficult point of this year.

Sickness. I’ve been sick FOUR times this year; none were great experiences. COVID in early January with a dash of severe flu at the end of the month, a weird bug/cold mid-November, and I guess the weird bug’s long lost cousin in mid-December.

French. I feel like I have to include this on the list every year because if I don’t, it’s like I’m giving up on this “goal”. Learning to speak French fluently is such a big dream for me, but I can’t quite call it a goal because I haven’t made many tangible steps to actually accomplish this. I just don’t prioritize it that high when it comes to everything else like career, fitness, content creation, etc. So when my priorities are battling for my time, learning French unfortunately doesn’t make the cut.

Volunteering. I had the wonderful opportunity to sponsor a few children from the Dominican Republic with GO Ministries and help out with additional medical costs while also getting to write to the kids and see their end-of-year Christmas school photos! Getting involved with GO Ministries has been such a blessing. However, I wish I was able to give more of my time to these kinds of causes, because I think time is just as valuable as helping out financially. 2023 was nice because I had a few meal packing opportunities and other volunteer events. I only participated in one virtual volunteer event this year for a cause that has a very special place in my heart (educational fact cards for children with disabilities) and one in-person event, but I would have liked to make the time to give back to the community more this year.

3. What did I learn this year?

AI isn’t your enemy… but you still shouldn’t have a dependency on it. So, I do have to admit that, in full classic Boomer style, I was pretty against using ChatGPT when all that stuff blew up. Once I saw how much Nate used it as more of an assistant, I found it super helpful for wedding planning, movie summaries after I watched something to make sure I understood the plot correctly, and explaining rules of really complicated board games.

Earplugs are a game changer for preserving your hearing. I used to have a really hard time wearing earplugs because of how weird it made my voice sound when I spoke, but I’ve gotten a bit used to it and now don’t mind the earplugs as much as I used to. It feels really nice to know I’m protecting my hearing from irreversible 100 dB damage.

Wedding planning is SO much fun! (if you’re an analyst) I don’t know. I just always hear about how stressful wedding planning can be, and don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely some stress! But the Excel workbook that Nate & I have with countless sheets on every detail of the wedding, =vlookup formulas for our guest list and details, conditional formatting for the pros/cons of our vendor analysis… yeah I had way too much fun with that.

Do not ever, EVER, EVERRRRR use cheap plastic sleds when sledding down a steep hill that hasn’t been tested yet. We put a lot of faith into a blue thin plastic plate that brought us from glory to agony real quick. The joy of soaring in the air was quickly interrupted by landing straight on a tree stump that was under the snow (which we didn’t see). My knee landed straight on it after being in the air for a bit and I could’ve sworn that my leg broke. (It didn’t, I just could barely walk for the rest of the day.)