2024-01-11

2023 in Review

tl;dr:

Whew, 2023 was a lot. Very hard. Not great. Would not repeat. Hopefully the challenges led to growth that will serve me for the rest of my life etc. etc., but mostly I'm just tired.

Major life events

"Small" home renovation that spiralled into a 6-month behemoth that absolutely drove us to the brink.
Started seeing a psychiatrist for the first time; it turns out seeking mental healthcare improves your mental health, whodathunk.
Gave up playing video games completely in August.
Tested out Maine for ~6 weeks in the autumn, fell in love with Belfast.
Our son turned 2! It's a constant race between his growth and my back pain.
Missed the entirety of our scheduled Christmas celebrations due to the whole house coming down with something gnarly. 0/10 would not recommend.

Lessons:

Don't start any major work on a 100-year old house unless you're ready and willing to do a lot of work on most of the house.
Especially if you're doing most of the work yourself.
Lead remediation is hot and sweaty misery.
Especially in Florida.
Toddlers are hard.
Especially on a Florida-to-Maine-and-back road trip.
Toddlers are awesome.
It turns out you have way more free time when you cut out things designed to suck up all of your attention.
Especially if you're prone to being sucked in by highly stimulating interactive content.

Media

I did a horrible job of keeping track of what I read/watched/listened to. These are the things I happened to jot down or remember.

Books

Murderbot Diaries (series)
Children of Time series
The Collapse of Complex Societies (ok, haven't finished this yet but it's been really engaging to work through)
Started chipping away at Discworld again, it's hard to overstate how funny Terry Pratchett was.

Online content

I was going to have a nice section listing my favorite web content of the year but I failed
I did build something I think is fun, however: MegaTic

Podcasts

I finally started listening to Critical Role, Campaign 3 seemed like a nice fresh start that I had a chance of catching up to. Still nowhere near caught up. Still enjoying it.

Television

Ted Lasso, Season 3: If all I got from this final season was the Amsterdam episode I would have left happy.
Lessons in Chemistry, Season 1 Alright I'm going to be honest here and admit that we're still wrapping up the show, but I've really enjoyed it.
Wheel of Time, Season 2 Is it a good adaptation for a purist? No. Is it a much better product than the first season, especially if you don't check in with the internet peanut gallery after each episode? Absolutely.

Movies

Technically I watched this in early 2024 when it released to streaming, but I thought Barbie was phenomenally funny
I definitely watched movies in 2023, but I did a bad job of keeping track. My 2-year old son's favorite movie is Pride and Prejudice though, which I think is an absolute win.