This is a personal year in review. For a moment I thought about talking about events that happened this year, like sea shanties or stuck boats or the Olympics, but I guess that kind of thing doesn't belong in a year-in-review, so you can check my weeknotes for that kind of thing. You can also check the yearnotes tag for previous years-in-review.

Essay-writing section

2021 is of course year two of this Covid pandemic age (who knows how much longer it will last). Despite that, the country more or less loosened lockdown restrictions this year as vaccinations got going, at least compared to 2020. This means I got out more, mostly for short-distance walks, errands, medical appointments, and such.

Professionally, this was a hiatus year for me (see work stats below), same as 2016. I am aware that it is absolutely a privilege that I am able to live off savings and investments enough to take extended time off. And honestly I'm at a point in life where I'm tired of the very concept of capitalism and employment in general. I'd much rather be spending my time wandering through life finding interesting things. I am as yet unsure whether I will actually take up new work this year. (Leaning no.)

I spent my time consuming games, books, tv, movies; advancing various side projects, many of which I'd not written of publicly; learning new things; and taking on various medical/household errands to support the folks. I restarted some old habits like sketchdaily and morning pages via 750 words, and managed to carry them through the year.

In 2020 the new thing I got into was Twitch streaming. For 2021 I tried my hand at some amateur gamedev, a longtime dream of mine that I never managed to seriously pursue.

Re: Covid, our household got our vaccinations done in June. All four of us at home are either seniors or with comorbidities, so we are close to the top of the priority list. Despite that, we got hit with Covid in late September. I was just a mild case, but the seniors were severe; the hospital stay lasted three weeks.

Financially, I didn't earn anything from employment in 2021, so my savings dipped a bit. The Covid expenses were a big part of that. Everything is still manageable.

2021 Statistics

I will fully admit I spent far too much time putting these stats together, but that's because I really enjoy putting stats together! Many of these stats tell part of my story for the year, and help inform what I need to adjust going into the next year.

Work, Travel, Learning and Self Improvement

• Hours worked: 0, down from around 100 last year.
  • I mentioned in the 2020 yearnotes that for 2021 "I have been considering taking the year off completely like I did in 2016". That came true! The consulting project I was involved with last year kind of trailed off, and some interesting opportunities passed by in 2021, but I opted not to pursue and just be chill for the entire year.
• Programming languages/frameworks learned: 1, same as last year
  • I learned Godot's GDScript for my gamedev adventures!
• Duolingo streak: 1082 days (from 718 last year).
  • The math here doesn't add up, since 1082 - 718 is only 364, but maybe I took the above stat on Jan 1 2021? I'm pretty sure I never broke the Duolingo streak this year, not even with a streak freeze! I will admit to being super lazy with Duolingo this year though. I used to always do both Spanish and Japanese exercises everyday, but this year I mostly chose one or the other. We'll see if we can improve that next year!
  • There was a Duolingo year in review!
• Other countries visited: 0!

On the internet

• 150 blog posts, 99,852 words worth; up from 115 posts and 98,537 words last year. Most of that weeknotes and reviews, but here's a sampling of the posts that don't fall under those categories:
  • Regular Reviews and Tracking
  • Blogs of Yesteryear Part 1 and Part 2
  • Programming is hard, but anyone can be a programmer
  • Math and Privilege
  • Comsat and Compshops
  • On Being President
  • Rubber-Band Powered Car
  • The Covid Experience
  • Thoughts on the Leni Campaign
• 176 links shared - up from 115 last year
• 290 comments! Down from 486 last year.
• Facebook: 0 posts and 0 comments.
  • My account has been reactivated though, because I needed to check some stuff there at one point. However, I went ahead and unfollowed everyone on there, so that I'm not tempted to open it too often.
• Twitter: 1261 tweets (up from 1037 last year).
• Instagram: 26 photos. Vs 46 last year.
• Reddit:
  • 6 submissions (6 last year)
  • 388 comments (31 last year) - most of these were to r/Sketchdaily
  • There's a Reddit Recap!
• Quora: 0 answers written.
• Nanowrimo: 0 words written
• Full live stats for content on this site and social media activity available here.

Also, here's a wordcloud for 2021:

2021 Year in Review - wordcloud.png

wordcloud.png Jan. 1, 2022, 8 a.m. Close

Media consumption

• Movies. (New) movies watched: 65, up from 47 last year.
  • The list.
  • I intentionally came into the year intending to watch more films than before. Most of these were action films (unsurprising), including an almost-complete Jack Ryan run and the complete 25-film James Bond run! All of these were watched at home due to the pandemic of course.
  • The best one on the list was probably the classic film The Godfather, but I'd guess my favorite was actually the final Craig Bond film No Time To Die.
• Books read: 26, way up from last year's 2.
  • The list, with 18 fiction and 8 nonfiction.
  • Last year's action item was read more books, so I'd say that's a success!
  • This year's fiction reads included my first Agatha Christie and my first Le Guin. I may have also padded the list by counting a whole stack of comic strip compilations.
  • I think my favorite fiction read of the year was Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness. My favorite nonfiction read of the year was Katie Mack's The End of Everything.
• TV/Streaming
  • Netflix: 578 items in the watch history (802 last year). Numbers are way down!
    • New (to me) stuff I watched included Cobra Kai season 3, the old Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, Star Trek Enterprise and Star Trek The Animated Series (to complete the classic Trek shows), and Kim's Convenience season 5.
    • Rewatches of Gurren Laggan, Brookyln Nine-Nine and New Girl
  • Prime Video: Unfortunately doesn't provide a convenient method of counting the items in my watch history.
    • New stuff I watched included Invincible, Jack Ryan season 2, and Wheel of Time
    • Also enjoyed rewatches of House MD, Parks and Recreation and The Office
  • Others:
    • Managed to watch all the Disney MCU shows somehow!
    • Here's the list of all the TV shows I've written about this year.
  • My favorite show of the year has to be Wandavision.
• Music tracks played (Spotify/LastFM): 1662. (773 last year). See listening stats here. Also, here's my 2021 Spotify Wrapped.

Content creation

This is a new section! Does that make me a content creator now? Maybe we're all content creators now.

• Twitch streaming:
  • streamed on 38 separate days, for a total streaming time of 88.45 hours
  • 31 of those days had at least one chat message, so I only had 7 streams without viewers
  • currently at 23 followers
• Gamedev:
  • Participated in 2 game jams and published 2 games on itch.io!
    • Diver
    • Manananggal
  • Hoping to be able to do more game jams in 2022!
• Sketching:
  • r/sketchdaily: 365 sketches submitted for the year!
    • 165 of those were hand-drawn, mostly on this tiny pad I have on my desk; but some were also in a ruled notebook I had during the hospital stay
    • 200 digital using the Procreate iPad app
    • I feel like I phoned in a lot of these, especially later in the year when I kept falling behind. But looking through last year's sketches, I actually liked a lot of them! Here's a selection of some highlights.
    • I wasn't sure about continuing the habit for another year, but I guess I'm giving it a try!

Gaming

• Games purchased (not including any I got for free for some reason): 35, mostly from Humble bundles, down from 67 last year.
  • Steam purchases (10):
    • Princess Maker Refine
    • Game of Thrones Boardgame Digital Edition
    • Guilty Gear Strive
    • Great Ace Attorney
    • Children of Morta
    • Gloomhaven
    • Tales of Vesperia
    • Wasteland 3
    • Witcher 3 GOTY
    • Fury of Dracula
  • Humble (24)
    • 12 games Feb Humble Choice
    • 12 games Aug Humble Choice
  • PS3 (1)
    • Tales of Xillia 2
  • No PS4 or Nintendo Switch purchases this year! I actually even let my PS+ sub expire since the offerings were kinda meh.
• My gaming spend is waaay down this year since last year included the Nintendo Switch. And yes, less games purchased. Have so far been able to resist getting a PS5 (the thing is huge!) or a PC upgrade.
• Games "finished" (story/campaign completed OR achievement complete OR played a bunch of multiplayer on): 12, up from 11 last year.
  • The list. Includes 5 RPGs, 4 boardgames, a fighting game, a metroidvania and an Ace Attorney. One game each on PS4 and Switch, and the rest on Steam.
• Steam playtime this year: 717.23 hours (up slightly from 678.75 hours last year)
• Most played Steam games for the year:
  • Eternal Card Game - 234.17 hour(s)
  • Root - 105.68 hour(s)
  • Street Fighter V - 68.12 hour(s)
  • Tales of Symphonia - 58.27 hour(s)
  • The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles - 53.35 hour(s)
  • Blood Rage: Digital Edition - 38.82 hour(s)
  • Sid Meier's Civilization VI - 36.63 hour(s)
  • GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- - 33.57 hour(s)
  • Blasphemous - 22.12 hour(s)
  • Sentinels of the Multiverse - 11.73 hour(s)
• Gaming/Steam stats page
• Nintendo Switch playtime this year: 75 hours, down from 159 last year (thanks Nintendo for providing a year-in-review!)
• CCGs
  • Magic The Gathering
    • No paper events attended
    • Magic Arena
      • hit Mythic rank in constructed 5 months out of 12
  • Eternal
    • hit Master rank in Throne 3 times and in Expedition once
    • highest rank: 21st in Throne!
• Fighting games
  • Street Fighter V
    • After five years of playing this game on and off, I actually managed to hit silver rank this year! T_T
  • GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE-
    • Played this one a lot this year as well, and surprisingly managed to reach ranked floor 8, despite being not very good at it!
• Average points per turn in Words with Friends: 28.3, down from 29 last year. D: Also, I only have two active opponents now for some reason.

Others

• Fitbit activity: 1,175,356 steps, 916.78 km walked.
  • This is almost double of last year's stats, and roughly two thirds of the count from pre-pandemic 2019. Not too bad, considering we actually are still in the pandemic and I even lost some weeks to covid. Here's to hoping I can get back to walking more regularly and for longer distances in 2022.
• Donuts eaten: 8 donuts and 5 munchkins, up from 2 last year. This was because we discovered Lola Nena's three cheese donuts this year.
• Baptisms attended: 0 (down from 1)
• Weddings attended: 0
• Wakes attended: 0
• New pamangkins: 0
• Grab:
  • Trips: 12, up from 3 last year.
    • After the Covid experience, my dad wasn't allowed to drive for a while, so Grab became our primary method of getting places (usually to and from hospitals or clinics for medical errands or vaccination)
  • Food delivery: 58, way up from 3 last year.
    • I guess this increase is an indication of how I eventually got more comfortable with the idea of ordering food more often during the pandemic, probably because I was getting tired of the same meals everyday at home.
    • Also, towards the tail end of the hospital stay, we were ordering food pretty often, as we had gotten tired of hospital food.
  • GrabMart: 2 (0 last year)
  • Express delivery: 6, up from 1 last year. This was mostly sending stuff out to my brothers.
• Bears defeated in single combat: 0
• Something new: A while back I had created a profile on Ko-fi and added a link at the bottom of each post where people could give me tips if they liked. On Dec 30, I got my first tip on Ko-fi! I'm making money on the internet! (I'm super grateful!)

The future

One last statistic: this year's yearnotes is twice as long as last year's, I may have overdone it a bit! Next year I'll consider splitting into multiple posts maybe?

Let's see what 2022 brings!