Yearnotes 1

Another year over. In hindsight I picked the worst possible period of my life to document with weeknotes: the 2010s were full of travel, projects, people, adventures; so far the 2020s have been all about staying indoors and not dying. But if we all keep hanging in there, maybe things will get interesting again. Right?

I continued to get pleasure from baking bread all year. Here’s my first loaf of 2021, which I was already pretty happy with:

Since then I’ve kept getting better at judging when and how to do the various steps, and getting a bread pan has made the results a bit more professional. Today I baked my last loaf of the year:

This is still not perfect but it’s good enough that I no longer feel the urge to improve anything. These days I do the whole thing on autopilot and the loaves are consistently really nice. Next year I might try being more adventurous in my ingredients instead — I’d like to chuck in some cocoa powder or walnuts or raisins and see what happens.

As will be evident to anyone reading this, I really struggle with laziness. I’m very happy to just do nothing and that makes it difficult to motivate myself to do something specific if it’s not interesting enough. Consequently I gave up on a lot of things I started this year:

1. reading Klara and the Sun — I began well but quickly failed

2. playing Returnal — this initially grabbed me before I realised it’s a bad game that’s badly designed, and by the time they started fixing it I’d already lost interest

3. playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla — just went nowhere and fizzled out

4. watching Schitt’s Creek — I’m sure it does get good later but I couldn’t make it through season one

5. playing Deathloop — awful

6. watching The Expanse — I wanted to get into this but the first season was so uneventful that I stopped bothering

7. watching Ted Lasso — at some point in season two the magic wore off and I drifted away

But! Partial redemption! There were also some things I didn’t give up on:

1. playing Control — a slow burn but I eventually loved this

2. playing Life is Strange: True Colors — the cosy, unchallenging interactive storytelling I crave

3. replaying The Last of Us Part II — I’m still doing this in fits and starts but it’s very engaging the second time through despite no longer containing any surprises

4. watching The Leftovers, WandaVision, Loki, Kevin Can F**k Himself, Mare of Easttown, Succession, Squid Game, The Witcher and Foundation

5. daily stretching — I started this so I could touch my toes, but having achieved that I’ve kept it up all year and not missed a day

6. using a walking desk, although the treadmill itself did give up so maybe this doesn’t fully count

7. exercising at home — I don’t do this every day but I’m still making time for it more often than not

8. losing weight — I managed to hit my arbitrary flour sack goal, and although I’ve definitely regressed a bit (especially in the last week), I’m mostly still doing well

9. giving a RubyConf talk — the video, code and blog post were far too much work and I didn’t feel great about it, but I got it done

10. writing weeknotes — frankly I feel like it’s an achievement to have kept these coming given how many people have thrown in the towel this year; obviously it’s nothing compared to how long Alice has been at it, but I don’t think I’ve ever kept up any constructive habit for this long before

So I am a little bit stronger, lighter and more flexible than I was at the start of the year, and my website’s got a fair number more words on it, so that’s progress of a sort.

As is probably evident from the above, I’ve felt mostly disappointed by video games this year. The Last of Us Part II was such a treat in 2020 and I’ve missed getting lost in something comparable in 2021. PlayStation Plus hasn’t yielded a single monthly game I wanted to play, and the ones I’ve bought have mostly been a bust. I definitely need to improve my awareness of what kind of game I will actually enjoy rather than just wasting money because of misguided FOMO.

There were some happy exceptions. I got the new PS5 version of Control on a whim and it turned out to be much better than I expected or perhaps even realised at the time — I still find myself thinking about it surprisingly often.

Watching Nat play through Red Dead Redemption 2 & The Witcher 3 was another highlight. I’d previously failed to get into both games as a player, but I found them really fun as a spectator.

I’m still enjoying Life is Strange: True Colors and I’ve had good times playing It Takes Two with Gabi & Maple. I’m hopeful about Horizon Forbidden West; I don’t know what to look forward to on the PS5 after that.

It’s been a weird year for TV. Succession was everything I’d hoped for, but shows like The Witcher and Foundation have left me feeling pummelled by opulent drivel at times. Maybe in 2022 I should take a break from the streaming service money firehose and finally watch The West Wing, The Sopranos or The Wire (I know) instead.

Cracking The Cryptic has been such a comfort for the last few months. I watch it every day. I know it’s weird. I can’t help it. Despite countless hours of narrated solving I’m still completely unable to do any of the puzzles myself so you can rest assured I’m not getting any intellectual benefit.

When I first started keeping weeknotes I didn’t have any concrete expectations of what I would write about, but in hindsight I’m a bit disappointed that they’ve ended up consisting almost entirely of vague opinions on media. I suppose that reflects the world in which we live as well as my inherently boring personality and lifestyle.

The weeknotes themselves don’t matter, of course, but they do make me realise I’ve been feeling a bit stuck and uninspired this year. I’d like to find opportunities to mix things up a bit next year so that I’m not repeating the same pattern. Maybe visit some new geographical locations? Start some new projects? I do need a change because I don’t want to live the rest of my life in a risk-averse trance.

Being stuck indoors for work doesn’t help, and nor does barely seeing friends in real life. I also haven’t had a real holiday for 2 years — the only places I’ve slept in that time have been my flat, Nat’s flat and (on a few rare occasions) my parents’ house. Next year I should definitely go somewhere new for a few nights even if it’s just in the UK, and perhaps it’s time for me to accept the elevated COVID risk of socialising more and occasionally working in public places for the sake of my mental health.

The final major inconveniences hanging over me are the increasingly unsuitable location of my flat and the continued existence of my freelance-era limited company. If I can summon the energy to move somewhere else and shut down the company I think I’ll be happier.

Work is, I think, going okay. I was glad to be promoted even though I haven’t worked out how to do my job any differently yet. Since leaving my previous company I’m certainly relieved to have climbed off the “tech executive” train; it’s very relaxing to no longer feel obliged to read irritating blog posts about how to manage people or run a team or whatever. I always get the most pleasure out of working directly with other engineers and solving interesting technical problems, and I’m getting to do plenty of both.

I remain hopeful that there’ll be some form of work travel next year and I’m looking forward to it. Meeting my teammates for the first time is an exciting prospect, especially if it’s in Canada.

My attention span is continuing to get slowly worse. I can hardly ever sit down and watch something from beginning to end without pausing it halfway through to do something else, just for the sake of some variety. I’m guessing this is symptomatic of the “stuck and uninspired” problem so I’m going to tackle that first and see whether my focus improves.

In the normal course of events I make a respectful effort to not bang on about how much I resent writing weeknotes, but trust me, it’s a lot. I don’t like the chore hanging over me every Sunday. I rarely feel like I have anything worth writing about and it can be painful and embarrassing to scrape the barrel.

But I persist because I like the unbroken streak, I think I need the practice, and I value the occasional (implicit or explicit) feedback I get from people who read them. At times like this I’m glad I have the record of my year to look back on.

To be clear though, I do hate it.

See you next year! 🎆