Note: if you have published a similar 2022 in review on your site, I would love to see it! You can email me a link at kwon(at)fastmail(dot)com.

How did 2022 go? All things told, it was… a year. In reflecting on how to reflect on this past year (I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I am an overthinker, particularly when it comes to writing things here), I had trouble relying on recall for notable events and accomplishments. As part of a separate personal exercise to work towards defining what my (aspirational) principles are, I realized that no matter what I claim I value, the cold hard truth lies in where and how I spend my resources: time, money, and energy.

Energy is hard to quantify and track, but time and money are more easily auditable, so I set out to review my calendars, photos, tracking apps, and bank accounts, and comb the data to understand where I was spending my time and money and how I felt about it. It was interesting to see how much I’d actually forgotten and put myself back in the place when I was deciding to go to that event or buy that thing or read that book.

I suppose there are two ways to look at that, which is that ultimately these decisions don’t matter much so I shouldn’t perseverate too much on whether to do a thing or not, or, some decisions DO really matter in the sense that they may become repeated and habitual and therefore over time the positive or negative effect compounds (like choosing to exercise).

Here’s where I spent my time in 2022.

Time

These are arbitrary buckets that are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive, but here’s how I segmented this section (other than #3, I excluded time spent working, mostly for simplicity and also because I think that’s a totally separate exercise):

  1. Travel/vacation
  2. Shows and events
  3. Networking, mentorship, career exploration (outside of work)
  4. Hobbies attempted
  5. Parties and gatherings
  6. Screen time
  7. Fitness
  8. Media consumed
  9. Other

Travel/vacation

I took 22 days of vacation this year and traveled to 6 different places, all within the US. Most memorable:

  • Swimming with manta rays at nighttime in Hawaii
  • Eating my way through New Orleans (somewhat unexpectedly, one of the best meals was fried chicken from a gas station in the Tremé).

Shows and events

I attended 17 events (concerts, comedy shows, book talks, etc), which honestly was more than I thought at a rate of more than once a month on average. In pre-pandemic times, I would go to 2-3 events a week. Most memorable:

  • Eddy Kwon in the catacombs in Green-Wood cemetery. This was a solo performance art piece held in the catacombs of the cemetery, which was about as weird and surreal as it sounds.
  • Disability and Joy round table discussion with Judith Heumann, Chella Man and Jezz Chung at the Leslie-Lohman Museum. I had first heard about Judy Heumann’s story and her advocacy for disability rights from a Netflix documentary a few years ago, and the Instagram algorithm knows I’m queer and Asian and has served me Chella Man’s and Jezz Chung’s content many times. One part towards the end of the discussion has been particularly sticky and persistent in my brain since then, which was the idea that people may believe they are bonding with other people over their shared identities (queer, Asian, disabled, New Yorker, artist, etc) but maybe it’s actually bonding over shared values and while you may be more likely to share values with people whose identities are similar to yours, it is not a necessary condition. It resonated with me because I have been disappointed (and have been the disappointer, I’m sure) by people of whom I had high expectations just because they were ALSO Korean or ALSO a woman or ALSO a jigsaw puzzle enthusiast or what have you.

Networking, mentorship, career exploration

I didn’t spend too much time or energy on these this year, but in general I think this is a great use of time that tends to be extremely high yield. I’ve never regretted spending 30 minutes talking with people new to me in my industry (digital health, tech, healthcare), finding out more about what they’re working on, and bookmarking them in my mind. I’m not sure the best way to quantify this, but I found in my calendar that I had coffee meetings, phone calls, or virtual meetings with 6 new people this year (this excludes all the new people I met through work, which is also a great way to meet new people in the industry while getting paid to do it). Two were people I’d consider in my peer group, two were people I’d consider myself a mentor to, and two were company founders.

Hobbies attempted

I am a perpetual hobbyist and tried getting into the following this year:

  • Woodworking (built a lil wooden stool)
  • Ceramics (made a thicc lil bowl that I store my eyeglasses chamois and other desk ephemera in)
  • Film photography (tried to surgically restore an old Canon AE-1 that my parents used to take pictures of our family growing up; failed miserably and probably damaged it irreparably, but also found my old Lomo ActionSampler and started playing around with it, though have yet to get through a whole roll of film because I keep forgetting to bring it with me when I go outside in good lighting)
  • Mechanical keyboards (built a cute 65% keyboard and a cute numpad)
  • Jigsaw puzzles and Lego (sometimes I just get in a Mood, bust out my puzzle table and bang out a 500-piece puzzle)

Parties and gatherings

I attended or hosted 13 parties and gatherings that had some kind of invitation (i.e., excluding 1:1 lunches/dinners/drinks or impromptu “hey I’m in your neighborhood, wanna grab a coffee” meetups). I really enjoy hosting and plan to do more of it in 2023.

Screen time

According to my Screen Time app, I spent ~37 hours per week (4–7 hours a day over the past 4 weeks) on my phone, which seems absolutely insane. I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but I think this is definitely a big opportunity area for an intention to set in 2023. I frequently vacillate between “smartphones are evil capitalist sleeper agents sent to our pockets to make us spend money on commerce” and “smartphones are marvels of modern technology that enable us to do things that transcend our parents’ and grandparents’ generations’ wildest dreams”. Honestly, maybe both of those things can be true. Regardless, having this data is very helpful.

Fitness

According to my Health app, I spent an average of 8 hours and 15 minutes in bed. I am extremely conscious of my sleep hygiene these days (having spent the better part of my 20s and early 30s with the worst sleep hygiene ever, staying up for 24+ hours at a time, napping in a chair in the ICU with two pagers on my chest ready to go off at any moment, etc), so I’m pretty pleased with that.

My average daily step count was 10,872 steps per day in 2022, which is an improvement over 8,864 steps/day in 2021 and 7,813 in 2020, and better than my pre-pandemic average of 10,114 in 2019.

I got an indoor exercise bike about a month ago and am working on building the habit of using it 5–7 days a week.

Media consumed

I watched 44 films this year. My favorites, in no particular order:

  • Everything Everywhere All At Once
  • Barbarian
  • Glass Onion
  • The Menu
  • Do Revenge
  • Do the Right Thing
  • Nope

I watched 12 short films. My favorite was one called Tank Fairy, about a queer kid growing up in Taiwan.

I at least started a whopping 37 television series, limited series, or comedy specials (I abandoned 10 for various reasons including “oh I forgot I was watching that” to “They got me with the first few episodes but now it’s falling flat”). Favorites:

  • The Bear
  • Yellowjackets
  • Somebody Somewhere
  • The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers1
  • Angel2
  • Abbott Elementary
  • Moses Storm: Trash White
  • Mo

I finished reading 12 books (and started and then abandoned probably 3x that many). Favorites:

  • Solitary by Albert Woodfox
  • The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang

Other

Some other notable or memorable things in my life from this year:

  • Joined and quit the local food coop
  • Fostered a sweet dog for 5 days
  • Celebrated 2 years with my partner
  • Ate the spiciest food I’ve ever eaten in my life at a Thai restaurant called Zaab Zaab, and then the next day ate the 2nd spiciest food I’ve ever eaten in my life at an Indian restaurant called Masalawala and Sons
  • Hosted a virtual fireside chat with Michelle MiJung Kim, an author and activist who I really respect and admire
  • Tried and abandoned therapy (I have reasons for both!! Story for another time)
  • Co-hosted my favorite niece’s 4th birthday party
  • Found out that horses remember if you smiled or frowned the last time they saw you (AND modify their behavior accordingly) and honestly I’m still not over it

Okay, this year in review is getting to be QUITE long (I’m told the “year in review” should not actually take the full year to write/read) not to mention I have wandered into equine memory territory, so I will put a 📌 in this for now and conclude the “where did my time go in 2022” audit and pick back up tomorrow with results and insights from my “where did my money go in 2022” audit. It may or may not include a doughnut chart!

Edited to add: Here’s the second part. 🍩

  1. Mostly from nostalgia for the original movies ↩︎

  2. I was always a huge Buffy fan but never got into Angel when it was on when I was a teenager, but now I feel like I appreciate the darker tone ↩︎