2023 in Review

In times of uncertainty, it is best to invest in yourself. So, I’ll start with health.

Health

Eyes

In June, I finally decided to do an eye surgery. I’ve been wearing contact lenses for around 15 years now. And have been contemplating doing laser correction for at least 4 years already. That was one of the best decisions of this year. The surgery was a quick and painless procedure. And now, several months later, I almost forgot that I’ve ever had a poor vision.

Checkups

Besides that, I did an extensive checkup with my primary care doctor and also solved some long-standing teeth issues. I won’t describe all the details here, but encourage everyone to take of yourselves and do regular checkups.

Somewhat related, I continued to donate blood regularly. It helps to save lives and also is beneficial for your health.

Fitness

I’ve updated home scales to a connected model, so now I just stand on them every morning, and my weight is always up to date in the Health app. Just having it at a glance helps to keep myself in form.

Starting August, I also run regularly again with a plan to run half-marathon and a full marathon in 2024. Love my Apple Watch (I even made a custom band for it!) but prefer Garmin for sports.

Sleep

I once heard that if you have a free 30 minutes, the best investment for them is to go sleep half an hour earlier. Throughout the year, I’ve been consistently hitting my 7-hour sleep goal and that made me feel so much better overall.

Self-care

A simple new feature in Apple Health app to log emotions, helped me a lot in the second half of the year. I understood what was (de-)motivating me, what really brought me joy and happiness, and what just drained me emotionally.

Another iOS 17 addition, the Journal app is also nice in this regard and helps to save memories, both pleasant and not.

Mental health

Somewhat related, I decided to mostly quit social networks. Since Musk killed Twitter, there has been no joy using it. I was tired of seeing perfect lives of others on Instagram. And luckily, I haven’t been using Facebook at all since many years already.

I also limited the amount of news I read, and prefer a digest newsletter which delivers all important information once a day.

Travelling

I was excited to attend KotlinConf this year. This was definitely one of this year’s highlights.

This year was also quite busy with traveling (at least for me). Some of these trips were very enjoyable, but some were rather tiring and useless.

Entertainment

TV and movies

Since streaming services started producing huge amounts of new content, I started picking it more carefully, because quantity rarely means quality.

The best TV series of the year is, no doubt, The Last of Us – a great adaptation of one of my favorite games.

I also enjoyed the second season of Loki and the Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story documentary.

Didn’t like any movies this year, but already set a reminder for Dune Part Two cinema ticket preorders.

Books

I read just two books last year, but they were great and I enjoyed them both.

First is Make Something Wonderful: a collection of Steve Jobs’ notes, speeches and emails, which you can also experience in unusual for an ebook form.

The second is Dune that I wanted to read finally before the second movie premiers.

PlayStation

This year I platinumed just three PlayStation games: It Takes Two (really enjoyed playing this one with my wife), A Plague Tale: Requiem, and UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection – could not resist getting back to a remaster of one of my favorite games of all time and a spin-off I haven’t played before.

I also liked Sackboy, which we also played together with my wife and Stray, which is still pending to be platinumed.

After the price hike, I canceled my PlayStation Plus subscription. The quality of the recent game additions there was to be improved, and I just didn’t have enough time to play them anyway.

What I’m looking forward to next year is the Last of Us Part II Remaster and a discount for Spiderman 2.

Looking forward to 2024

In the past years, my plans so often went bad due to unforeseen circumstances, so I’m a bit worried to make any for the next year.

Wish you all the best in 2024!

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