Another year has come to an end, and now is as good a time as any to look back on it. To be honest, I'm struggling to recall exactly what happened, but two years ago I made a habit of keeping a diary, so I may as well poke through last year's and compare it to year before's.
Hobonichi
For reasons I don't fully understand, at the end of 2021 I bought a very expensive diary made by the guy who made the Mother games. Spending so much on it meant I had to use it so it wouldn't have been a huge waste of money. Or so I tell myself. So, what do you get for the princely sum of 20-ish British pounds (double that if you want a cool cover) plus shipping? Well, you get a book with some high-quality paper, two different calendar layouts (which didn't get used much because I'm NEET), a page for each day (now with checklist), unmarked pages at the back for notes, and some miscellaneous pages with activities and information about Japanese food. One of those miscellaneous pages is a checklist of 100 things. I use this to make a note of neat things that happened that year. You could probably get the same effect with literally any other diary for a fraction of the cost (or just use your computer). The important thing is I made a habit of writing in it.
There's something nice about collecting my thoughts at the end of the day and committing it to paper; even though my life is pretty uneventful these days, doing that has really helped the problem of each day bleeding into the other, memory wise. If there's a lot of blank space after I'm done writing, sometimes I'll draw a picture. I'm not very good at drawing but some of them have turned out okay. There's a quote at the bottom of each spread, and that's something I (sincerely) look forward to reading. They're usually from a Japanese person I've never heard of, talking about a subject I'm unfamiliar with, and they're usually unlike anything I've heard before. Some of them are unusually profound and offer some real insight into the human condition.
2023 in Review
2023 has been one of the better years in recent memory, but I don't really know why. I've been unemployed for 2/3 of it, barely left the house since my job ended, and have had far fewer social interactions (both in the meatspace and the wired) than any year in recent memory. Something doesn't add up here because I'm not doing anything different. Compared to the other stretches as a NEET, this has been a walk in the park. The only real difference is that I'm actually getting job interviews this time around, so maybe that's all I needed.
In terms of major stuff that happened, I continued working as a research assistant until the end of March (I still have the work laptop), had a surprising amount of success getting job interviews, and managed to get another article accepted for publication (that'll probably get its own blog post). Other than that, I killed time by playing video games and watching a bunch of movies and TV shows. But mostly a shameful amount of RuneScape. I also tried my hand at making stuff. Last year I took up making model kits, and that's continued into this year. So far I've made 24, it's nice looking at them and thinking "I made that." I also tried my hand at learning Godot and Blender; hopefully I'll have a little prototype for something this year if I stop being lazy.
Since I liked rowing (well, coxing) in 2022, I figured I'd join my local boat club since I'm a NEET with all the time in the world. Unfortunately, I ended up quitting about a month in because I just wasn't enjoying it at all. I felt quite bad because everyone there was really friendly but I wasn't getting anything out of it. The river was just kind of miserable, which didn't help, but the real issue was that I was only going out in bowloaders - that's where you lie supine at the front of the boat. On top of being incredibly uncomfortable, it means you can't see what the rowers were doing, making it really difficult to give them any kind of useful feedback (e.g., which rower is out of time). Since that's pretty much all you do as a cox, I felt pretty useless and figured it wasn't worth the back pain. It's still something I want to do, so if I ever move I'll give it another shot.
Two very common themes showed up in my diary this year:
- My sleep is all over the place and I usually sleep as if I'm working a night shift.
- A lot of days I'll struggle to write events that happened - partly due to forgetfulness, but mostly because nothing really happened that day.
Not the best themes, I'll admit, but they could be a whole lot worse. Other stuff that showed up a lot included: The Venture Bros, the Ricky Gervais XFM show from ~2002, Elden Ring, The Sopranos, Tamers12345, and my room being unreasonably hot for seemingly no reason. They're all pretty great (well, not the room) and you should check them out if you're looking for something new.
It was quite interesting going through the entries again, as I'd forgotten a lot of stuff - especially in the earlier months - and some of the drawings weren't awful. I was honestly a little shocked by how sad and hopeless some of the entries were, but I'm glad I took the time to read everything. Some of them were pretty amusing with a kind of dramatic irony that comes from living in the future.
It's easy to feel pretty bleak about the whole NEET thing - and, to a degree, I feel like I'm wasting my life - but given that I got interviewed by some really high profile places last year I'm not completely hopeless. At this stage I'm either very unlucky or just very bad interviews. Probably both. In any case, I should make the most of all the free time I have and be glad that I can take it easy.
Comparisons to 2022
Considering that I'd been unemployed for 3/4 for 2023, it's probably not very surprising that less stuff happened than the year I was doing a master's degree and started a job. As a (bad) yardstick, looking at the "Neat things that happened" section of 2023's diary, 56 neat things happened; 16 of those were movies or tv shows I watched, 10 were related to video games, and 8 were model kits I finished. Compared to 2022 where 67 neat things happened; 2 being movies or television, 7 about games, and 3 about model kits. Most of that year was going to places or interactions with other people. To be honest, I lowered the bar for what qualified as "neat" for 2023.
Reading through 2022's diary, I'm struck by just how much happened and how vividly I remember some of the things I wrote about. I'm not sure that's something I can say about last year. 2022 was a real outlier compared to, well, pretty much very other year of my life. I'm kind of amazed that I managed to stay on top of all the responsibilities I had and still managed to have lots of time to do other things. I guess being a NEET has really warped my perception of time. Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of stuff about missing my friend, especially in the early months. I still miss him, but it's a lot less painful now (some days are a lot more difficult than others, but nothing compared to almost daily entries about missing him). Some of the entries from 2022 were just really depressing to read again, usually due to grief, loneliness, or a lack of progress in life. Certainly, this is all stuff I still worry about, but not to the extent that I wrote about it. There was also a lot of stress about being a NEET again nearing the end of my degree. As mentioned above, it's really not been that bad this time around. Rowing also seemed to make up a lot of the entries, but I guess it's not surprising given how much of a time commitment it was - even at the time, I was really grateful to have met so many nice people. Oh, and my sleep was just as bad that year.
One positive change that happened last year is that I've started watching a lot more movies at my local cinema. I can get cheap tickets until March and I made a lot of use of that. They even screened Evangelion 3.0+1.0 there. It's reminded me that I actually quite like movies and should try to watch more.
I'm not really sure what else to write, so I'll thank everyone for checking out this site. It's somehow sitting at just under 73,000 views now, which is crazy to me. I hope you found something useful or interesting on it. I hope your 2023 was good and that your 2024 will be better!
BIG UPDATE
While writing this post I got an email from one of the PhDs I applied for letting me know that I've been offered a funded PhD there. The money isn't great but given that getting funding for a law PhD is a nightmare, I would be an idiot not to accept. Better start learning Cantonese.