🗓 2021 Recap: Reprioritization

It’s hard to revisit my 2020 Review and not get bummed out. This year didn’t include nearly as many large changes and I struggled a lot personally. As a result, however, I tried a lot of new things and learned an extremely important lesson.

Here are the major highlights.

• 🖨 Learned 3D printing
• 🪵 Got into woodworking
• 🪴 Grew a garden for the first time
• 💪🏻 Setup a space to workout and exercise
• 📚 Finished 12 books (a new record!)
• ☕️ Quit consuming caffeine
• 😴 Failed to become a morning person
• 🧃 Brewed many batches of kombucha
• 📓 Made journalling a semi-regular habit
• 💼 Joined the team at Railway

The Work Struggle

I began 2021 self-employed with no income and the goal of launching projects that would eventually sustain myself. In March Jake, the founder of Railway, reached out to note that we were building very similar things. This actually got me quite excited and, after some back-and-forth, I applied to join!

It wasn’t that easy though. Part of the reason I tried so many new things in 2021 was because work wasn’t doing it for me. I got into 3D printing, woodworking, kombucha, and other things. I even gave up caffeine—which actually cured my anxiety! Unfortunately, none of that changed how I felt. I figured I just had some leftover resentment towards “working a real job” that I had to get over. I was able to bring this up with Jake and we made some changes that helped a lot, but I was still visited by waves of resentment every couple months.

It took until late December to realize that my feelings towards work were caused by abandoning my self-employment goal. The main goal I started the year with was being blocked by my job, and the full-time hours and resentment left no energy for my own projects. Luckily, now knowing that, I’ve been able to make some changes for the better.

Reprioritizing Goals

When I began writing this post in December I realized that I wasn’t working towards anything, so I formalized a goal. A big one. This year I’m going grow to my side-project portfolio enough to return to self-employment! 🙌

I spent a week improving my app Kabook! and am already excited about the future. But this shift in priorities had another, surprising effect. My resentment toward work is gone and I’m able to enjoy it again. I now see my job as an enabler for my goal because having a stable income affords more creativity by making revenue less urgent.

And that’s why I’m finishing this post a month late. I couldn’t bear to publish it without having a 2022 goal and, while I don’t know if I’ll be able to achieve it this year, that’s not the point. I’m super excited to have something to work towards and I know I’ll get there eventually.

See you on the other side 👋