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My 2023

I almost cannot believe how quickly this year passed by. It feels like one moment it was only February, and then I blinked once and suddenly Christmas carols were playing on the radio again. I think part of the reason this year went by so quickly was because I didn’t do much…? for most of the year? For a good solid 7-ish months I was just stuck at home applying for jobs day in and day out, and that type of life is just not very eventful. That doesn’t mean nothing eventful ever happened though! If you look at the big life events that happened this year, I actually did quite a lot this year! It was just a very slow process to get from one step to the next, with a lot of nothing in between. But in the end, I got where I wanted to go, and that is what counts! Now it’s time to figure out where to go next…

The Beginning of 2023 vs Now

I was in a very different place in my life at the start of the year. First of all, I was all caught up in a crush on one of my friends a year ago… It’s both weird that that was already a year ago and hard to imagine that that still felt like such a big deal back then. The situation escalated a bit in the first month(s) of the year (which I will not go into, but those who know know [eyes emoji]), but in the end it worked out for the best. I got over my crush, and we’re still very good friends, so I’m much happier about that part of my life at the moment.

Another big difference between me at the start of the year and me now was that back then I still had my reproductive organs. I had surgery at the start of the year, in the second week of January, and I feel much better now that they’re gone. Even though it wasn’t exactly fun to spend the first two months of the year in recovery, they were well worth it. So not only was I able to rid myself of worries and discomfort, I also got another step further in my transition.

The final big change: Back then I was technically still a Master student. Now I’m a graduate with a job. Is that a good change? Well, I’m definitely a step further in the grand path of my life, so technically that’s a yes. But does it feel like a step forward? I’m not sure. Sometimes I wish I could go back to being a student. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I can earn some money now and start building up the rest of my life, but I do often feel that I was happier back then. In that sense, it sometimes feels like I’ve taken a step backwards. But I guess progress in life isn’t always linear, so we’ll just have to see where next year brings us!

So yeah, in multiple aspects, I do feel like this year was the year I grew up a bit and moved on to the next stage of my life. So even if I’m not entirely happy with where I am now, I am proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish!

The Best Things about 2023

Hmm… this one is a hard one this year. I mean, it’s not like nothing great happened, not at all. But I do feel like there were fewer stand-out moments this year compared to the previous years. Nonetheless, there are still plenty of great things that happened this year. First of all: surgery! Of course, the surgery itself wasn’t great, but the result of it definitely was. I already feel much better in my skin than before I had surgery, and though I still have a long way to go to get to where I want to be, I’m glad I got to take a big step forward this year.

Then, to get a bit less serious, another great thing that happened this year was that my brother bought a playstation! I’ve played so many cool games this year: Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Stray, and more… I never thought I’d enjoy playstation games this much, but man have I spend many hours on my couch gaming on the playstation. It was awesome! And that reminds me that I also got a new Laptop this year, which I’m also super happy with (my old one was falling apart), which also allowed me to buy some awesome new PC games, so I think you can say it was a good year for games! And Spider-Man 2 and Baldur’s Gate came out this year, which is pretty cool too!

In March, I received my Master’s degree, which you could say is also a big highlight of the year. I still can’t believe I’m completely done with my studies. All these years that felt like such a faraway milestone… it’s so weird to suddenly have reached it. Which reminds me: another big highlight was my first salary! I’ve earned money before, but nothing beats your first grown-up salary.

I don’t want to make this too long, so I’m going to go through the next few highlights a bit quicker, but that definitely means that these are less important. They are perhaps a bit less grand, a bit more trivial, but no less important to making the year what it was. This year, I saw Dan Howell live again, I bought a tablet and started learning how to do digital art, I went to Toverland with friends (I was so excited!), I celebrated October 3rd in Leiden for the first time, I also went to comic con for the first time, my D&D character died and got a boyfriend (sort of), many great movies were released (Across the spiderverse, guardians of the galaxy, the D&D movie, Barbie, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, many of which I saw in the cinema with friends), great music was released (SHINee Hard, Taemin Guilty, Loossemble and ARTMS… what more do you want?), I got new glasses, aaand I think that is about it? Oh no, wait, how could I forget! The new doctor who episodes!! I was so hyped about those, and they did not disappoint! It was great to see David Tennant and Catherine Tate back in doctor who again, and it looks like Ncuti is going to be a fantastic doctor too, so I can’t wait for the new season to air next year!

So yeah, despite the fact that I may not consider the year 2023 as a whole to be much of a highlight year, many great things did still happen this year, and I’m very glad that they did!

My Resolutions for 2023?

Oh boy. I already took a quick look at them earlier today, and there are definitely a few that I did not complete. However, I do happen to know that I did set a lot of life goals that I was quite sure I was going to reach, and that I have in fact succeeded at most of those, so it might not be all bad! Let’s just grab last year’s list and see how well I did this time!

Life Goals:

Have Surgery! Obviously, my biggest goal for the year is to just finally have my hysterectomy and vaginectomy. I know it might seem like a bit of a cop-out to put something on my list that is very likely to happen, but the recovery is going to be tough, and you never know for sure it’s actually going to happen until it has happened, so if I have had surgery and recovered from it, it will still feel like a major accomplishment – Success! I had surgery, and it was indeed tough, but I got out better on the other side. I made it through, and I’m proud of that

Find a job! The next big goal is to find a job so I can start my new life as a certified adult – Another success! I found my job a bit later than I initially expected (in the end I started in November rather than in April like I’d thought I would), but a success nonetheless!

Move out! It’s going to be difficult to find a place to live in this economy, but once I have the money it will be my main goal. It really is time for me to have my own place. – That’s a fail, I’m afraid. Partially because I only found a job in November, but also partially because I think I underestimated how hard it is to even find a house. Granted, I haven’t tried yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’ll be challenging before the end of next year. Especially since I’ve realized that it might be smart to save a bit of money first. So yeah, that was a fail, but I still really want to move out, so I’m going to try again next year!

Get on the waiting list for phalloplasty. I really need phalloplasty, so the sooner I get on the waiting list, the better. – Success! I got on the waiting list on October 13th, after a phone call with my surgeon. Right now, it looks like 2025 (or maybe 2026) is going to be the year of Phalloplasty for me, which is still painfully far away, but at least I know now that it’s slowly getting closer every single day. Slow progress can be agonizing, but at least it’s still better than no progress at all!

Save some money. I have many saving accounts that are currently empty, and I have very little money overall. However, once I have a job, I might actually be able to save some money, so I hope that next year I’ll be halfway to my goal in 4 of my savings accounts. – I’m going to count this as a fail, since I’m not even halfway to my goal in one of my savings accounts, unfortunately. I am saving money right now, but unfortunately this year the amount of money in my account decreased significantly before I finally managed to earn something new. So yeah, no success on saving just yet, but again, a good goal for next year!

Buy a new laptop OR a piano. My laptop is falling apart a little bit, and I haven’t played the piano in ages, so I hope that I’ll be able to buy either a new laptop or a piano sometime next year! However, whether I can get a piano or not will depend on whether I’ll have my own house, whether there will be space in that house, and how much money I’ll be earning haha. – Success! Bought a new laptop as soon as I got my first salary in November and honestly that was probably the best purchase I’ve made all year. No regrets!

As soon as I'm recovered enough from my surgery, I want to do push-ups regularly again so I can build up a little bit of strength again. However, it's going to really depend on how long I'll take to recover after surgery, so I don't know whether I'll actually be able to do this. – Okay, this is more than a success. I didn’t just start doing push-ups again, I’m actually going to the gym every week now. I don’t think I could’ve predicted that I’d ever become a gym person a year ago, but that’s the fun thing about life, isn’t it? You never know exactly what is going to happen!

Reading Goals:

Read 25 Books! I know that’s a lot less than what I read this year, but I feel like I will be busy enough next year with other things, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have for reading. Still, I don’t want to neglect reading completely, so 25 books! If I succeed, I can go higher again the year after! – Fail, unfortunately. I read only 21 books this year. I haven’t really figured out yet how to combine reading (and my other 10 hobbies) with working full-time, but that will be a challenge for next year!

Get to a point where I only own 5 unread books at a time. I’m so close. I know I can do it – Nope. Currently have 19 unread books lying around in my room… :(

Finish reading at least 6 of the 12 series I’m in the middle of. I realized this year that it happens way too often that I start a series and don’t finish it, and then when I decide to continue the series I’ve forgotten what happened in the previous book, and that’s just a shame. So this year, I’m going to finish series instead of start them, and hopefully next year at this point I’ll only be in the middle of 6 series instead of 12… - Nope… I finished a grand total of 3 series… Very sad…

Read 5 Rick Riordan Presents books. I still want to catch up on these books as well. I’m in the middle of 2 Rick Riordan Presents series at the moment, so if I finish those that’s already 3 books. Then the next Rick Riordan Presents series I want to read only has two books, so I want to try to read those too. – Another fail… this is starting to get a bit depressing…

Keep reading classics. I want to read at least 2 new classics next year because I do want to keep reading those even though I’m done with my studies. However, I also don’t want to force myself to read too many of them against my will, so I think 2 is a good number. – Success! Yay! I’m glad I still managed to read some classics this year. I might be done with my studies, but I’m not ready to let English Literature go just yet. There are still so many classics that I haven’t read yet, and as an ex-literature student, I feel like it’s my duty to read as many of them as possible!

Keep up with new releases! And by that I mean, read the new Truly Devious book, Percy Jackson book, and Nevermoor book in the year they’re released, so in 2023! – Another success again! Nice! I read all of these books except the Nevermoor book, but that’s because that one got postponed, so it hasn’t actually been released yet. Hopefully I’ll be able to read that next year!

Art Goals:

Make 5 big art pieces. By that I mean I want to complete at least 5 drawings where I give them my all – colour it to my best abilities, add a background, and most importantly, don’t rush it! I want to make sure they are the best I can do. – Fail, but close! I finished 4 big artpieces this year, and I’m almost halfway through the fifth one! So I did my best!

Draw 2 more character posters for my D&D group. I drew 2 characters last year for my friends and framed both drawings, and they turned out so well and were so fun to make that I want to draw our entire party like that. However, they also took a lot of time, so 2 in a year should work. – Success! I drew one more character poster, and then made a drawing of our entire party for our DM. Currently, the only character that’s still left to draw is my own, so I will hopefully finish that one next year!

Other Goals:

Finish the following 3 games: Life is Strange: Before the Storm, Subnautica: Below Zero, and Skyrim. If I finish other games that is cool too, but these are the ones I really want to finally finish! – Okay, so here’s the thing. I finished quite a few games this year: Life is Strange: Before the Storm (as I said I would!), The original Life is Strange, Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Stray, Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call… and I also once again played a lot of Sims, so overall not such a bad year! But did I finish Skyrim and Subnautica: Below Zero? ……..

Finish the Heartstopper comics and watch the Netflix show – yes and no. I finished the Heartstopper comics, but then a new one came out in December which I don’t own yet. As for the show, I finished the first season! And then the second one came out, which I haven’t watched yet. So…. Kind of? But not really…

Check out some Doctor Who audio adventures! I put those off for when I needed to recover for surgery, so I should really actually listen to some of them while I’m recovering from my surgery. – Again, yes and no. I did check one out, but I only did so this week, and I haven’t gotten very far into them, so… yes? But not really in the way I meant.

If I do actually manage to get a piano, I want to start playing regularly again. It’s been way too long since I’ve done that (however, if I don’t manage to get a piano, I won’t count it as a fail, but will leave this goal for 2024, since I don’t know if I’ll be in the position to get a piano this year) – Hmmm, another ambiguous one. I don’t own a piano yet, but I am trying to get into the habit to play at least once a week, for about an hour on Sunday mornings. I haven’t really built up the habit yet, but I am working on it. So… kind of?

So that’s 19 total of which there were 8 successes, 8 fails, and 3 ambiguous answers. Honestly, I don’t think that’s so bad! I thought it would be worse, but I honestly did quite well this year, if I may say so myself! Only the reading goals could use a lot more work next year…

Expectations for 2024

This time, I find it much harder than usual to kind of know what to expect next year. I used to have a bit of an idea how a year would go, with school and university and all, but now? I don’t know. The future feels very blank and empty right now, which sounds kind of depressing but could also be a good thing. Empty means open, and open means that anything could happen. There could be so many cool things waiting for me this year without me even knowing it yet!

But a prediction like this is of course no fun without any specific examples, so I’m just going to try and guess what I think is going to happen. After all, the more wrong I am, the more fun I will have next year when I look back on this. So, right now it looks like I will work at my current workplace until the end of June, after which I can either decide to stay or move on to something else. I think I will decide to move on. My work right now is fine, but not something I want to settle for, so if I get the opportunity do try out something else I will definitely take it. So my guess is I’ll keep doing my current job until June, and then move on to the next one. In the meantime, I think I will mostly spend my weekends focused on my hobbies and my social life. I will keep going to the gym each Tuesday (and hopefully get a bit fitter!), keep going to Choir every Thursday, and try to find out how to balance working full-time with having a lot of hobbies. I will also keep saving money each month, so that when I’ll finally find myself a house, I’ll have enough money to actually furnish it. I also think I might end up buying a car at some point, since that is just going to save me so much time (and maybe even money too!). So, if I look at how my saving is going right now, I might be able to buy a car somewhere in the summer, which I might actually do.

I also still want to move out next year, after I’ve saved some money. So I think I will spend the first six months saving, and will then start seriously looking for a place to live. I don’t know if I’ll be able to actually find something before the year ends, but I want to at least have put the wheels in motion by then. And if I do find a place to live, I think that can go two ways: either I find a place somewhere in the same area that I live now (so in either one of the biggest adjacent cities), or I will find a place with a friend and live in the city where I used to study back in the day. Either way, I think I would be happy to have my own place. And if I have a car, nothing is really that far away.

So I’ll work, buy a car, move out. Take another few steps on the great path of life. I’ll turn 25 in June, which is already a major milestone in and of itself, but I’ve also always thought that 25 would be the perfect time to meet a lifelong partner, so maybe I’ll actually get lucky this time! You never know what the future will hold, so I might as well dream a little.

I probably won’t make any major progress in my transition, but I will get closer to 2025 which will hopefully be the year of phalloplasty. Plus, for the type of surgery I chose, I’ll need to lose a bit more weight, so that will be another goal I will work on in 2024. I’ll try to eat healthy and take care of my body, and hopefully reach my first goal before my appointment in April.

As for the rest of my year, I think I’ll have to leave that open. I do think I’ll renew my contract in October if I get the opportunity to, but other than that I have no idea what the future will hold. I know I want another job eventually, but I don’t think I will make drastic changes this year. This year will just be for exploring. Exploring what I want, exploring what I am good at and how I like to spend my time. My guess is that 2024 will be a relatively calm year where my life stays roughly the same. But 2025… something tells me that will be the year of big changes. So maybe a bit of calm before the storm is exactly what I’ll need.

Oh, and ARTMS will probably release an album this year. I’m looking forward to that!

2024 Resolutions

And now it’s time for my favourite part! Plans for the next year! I’m excited, motivated, and probably way too ambitious because I’ve once again got many plans for the coming year! I’ve mentioned most of my major goals already in the previous section about my expectations, but I’ve also still got many smaller, hobby-related goals that I am quite excited about! First of all, I really want to make this year the year of reading and writing. I’ve been getting into reading again this week and I am really realizing how much I’ve missed it, so I’m going to try to work it back into my life again, and I’ve got a plan for that! I want to be much more intentional with my time this year. After all, I keep complaining that I don’t have enough time in a day, but then I proceed to spend two hours aimlessly scrolling on youtube. If I only manage to replace my youtube time with hobby time, I could already win so many hours back! And what better to spend those hours on than reading and writing?

But that’s enough of my waffling! Let’s get into this year’s resolutions!

Life goals

Save money. I finally have a stable income, and I don’t have any rent to pay yet, so that means it’s the perfect time for saving money! This time, I want to have reached my goal in at least two of my savings accounts, I want to be halfway to my goal in at least 4 accounts total, and want have saved at least 1/6th of my goal in my emergency backup fund.

Buy a car. I don’t know if I’ll actually end up doing this, but right now this is something I want to work towards, so I’m just putting it on the list.

Move out. It’s time. Once I’ve saved a bit of money, it really is time to move out. I’m almost 25, and I definitely don’t want to keep living with my mother for much longer now. Moving out is a big change, and it feels a bit scary to have to truly start relying on my own income and money-managing skills, but that’s exactly why I should do it. It’s going to be hard to find a place, but I’ll sure as hell give it my best shot!

Keep going to the gym, lose some fat, and build some muscle! For my surgery, I had to lose around 5 kilograms before April, and I have a feeling it’s only going to be more after that. I’m okay with that though. Before covid, back when I was still skinny and somewhat active, I weighed significantly less than I do now, and I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to get back to around that weight. So, to give myself an actual measurable goal: I want to weigh less than 70 kg in April, and around 65 kg by the end of the year. As for the muscle… I’ll count on pictures document my progress there!

Writing Goals

Finish writing a draft for the first half of my book. Originally, I wanted to have my whole draft finished by the end of the year, but looking at the speed of my writing right now and considering how busy I will be once work starts again, I think getting halfway there is a much more realistic goal. Though I love being ambitious, if my goals are too unrealistic I tend to give up, so I think I’ll actually accomplish more here by putting the bar a bit lower here. So finish half a draft! I don’t think I’ll be able to pinpoint exactly where the halfway point of my story is, but I think I’ll know whether or not I have reached that point next year. If anything, I think I probably should have written at least 8 chapters. Maybe 10…

Build a habit of writing. I want to try to find a fixed moment every week that I can devote to writing. How else am I ever going to finish that draft?

Reading Goals

Read 24 books! This year, I’m going to set my reading challenge at 24 books. It’s a bit of a random number, one book less than my previous goal, but 24 a year means exactly two books a month, and that feels reasonable!

I still want to work on trying to reduce the amount of unread books I own. However, I feel like trying to read all 19 books I own now, plus all the books I might buy and the books I might get as gifts throughout the year, is simply not feasible. Therefore, I think this time I will instead focus finishing at least half of the books I currently own. In fact, I think I’ll make a list of 10 books I own now that I want to have read by the end of the year. Those books are going to be:

The Hero of Ages

The Anatomy of Story

Rule of Wolves

Aru Shah and the Nectar of Immortality

Cress

If We Were Villains

The Dawn of Yangchen

Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

The Fault in Our Stars

Read more non-fiction books and classics on my phone! One way I feel like I can significantly increase the amount of time I spend reading is by reading more books on my phone! Usually, the biggest reason why I don’t read while travelling is simply because pulling out my book often feels inconvenient. Either it’s busy and I have to stand, or my bag is so full I can’t find my book, or I only have a few minutes before I’ll have to stuff my book back in my bag again and rush out of the vehicle. But what do I always do in those situations? I pull out my phone. So if I just purchase some books in google books – something like non-fiction because it reads similarly to a webpage, or maybe a few classics because those tend to be quite cheap on there – and read those instead of scrolling reddit… I think that would be good for my reading goal! So this year, I want to have purchased and read at least 3 books on my phone!

Read 4 classics! Like I said, I want to keep reading classics, especially since I’ve been enjoying reading classics so much more now that I no longer have to. As for which ones… well, I definitely want to have read 1984 at least once. I also really want to read more Virginia Woolf, so I want to read at least one of her books this year.

Finish 5 series! Currently, I’m in the middle of 10 series, and that’s way too many. So I want to finish at least 5 of them. I especially want to finish Aru Shah, The King of Scars Duology, The Mistborn Trilogy, and the Lunar Chronicles. The 5th one I’ll leave open for myself. I guess that one is going to depend on what I feel like reading this year!

Finish my Heroes of Olympus Reread. I reread the first three books of this trilogy in 2022 and then never continued… I really want to reread the final two books in the series as well.

Art Goals

Finish the character poster of my own D&D character! I already have the frame ready, and it’s starting to look so cool. I really want to finish this drawing as soon as I can!

Finish at least 1 of the two art projects that I have planned for my D&D group. I won’t go into detail here in case one of them ends up reading this, but I have two pretty cool art-related gift ideas for my D&D group, and I want to have finished at least one of them!

Draw 5 digital character posters. I really want to develop my digital art skills, as well as create some more character posters for some of my own characters. What better way to work on both of those goals by combining the two and drawing some digital posters?

Finally use the paint my grandparents gave me last year, and make a painting

Fill 2-5 pages in my physical sketchbook with coloured drawings, using the new coloured pencils I bought this month. I bought these pencils for a reason. I want to learn how to use them.

Other Goals

Finish 5 games. I’m once again going to try to finish Subnautica: Below Zero and Skyrim, since it’s starting to bother me that I still haven’t yet. This is probably going to be the third year in a row that I’m going to try to finish Skyrim… I better actually do it this time. As for the other three, I definitely want to finish Baldur’s Gate. I also want to finish my replay of Detroit: Become Human, as it would be a shame to quit halfway through. As for the final game… I don’t know. Maybe if I ever come into the possession of a PlayStation 5, I’ll finally get to play Spider-Man 2! If not, we’ll see! I’m sure I’ll find a nice game that I really want to finish next year!

Actually properly check out the Doctor Who audio adventures. I’ve started one of them and really enjoyed it, so next year I want to have listened to at least 4 full 8th Doctor Adventures CD’s on Spotify. I have a feeling I will like those

And that is about all I can think of! Really, I feel like if only I can manage to free up enough time to work on these goals, 2024 could be a wonderful year! I may not have my dream life just yet, but that doesn’t mean I never will. I’ll keep working towards my goals, and hopefully get closer to finding out what my ideal life looks like every year. I don’t know what this next year will have in store for me, but I’m ready to find out!

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#my 2023 #personal #annual reflection post

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