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2021: A Year in Review

As we close out 2021 and head into the new year, I think that it will be important and interesting to see how this past year has gone, where I am at right now, and where I hope to be moving forward. I will separate this post into a few different categories, a bit different than normal, to make sure that I cover the various aspects of my life (in no particular order).

Physical Fitness

I started this past year still trying to gain weight going into my senior year of football. I was probably around 280-285 or so, with a goal of getting to 295+ by the start of the season, only putting on good weight. Last year around this time I sustained two simultaneous injuries of my chest and hip that prevented me from making a lot of the gains that I was hoping to make and threw me off the course of pursuing playing football at the next level. That being said, I think I went into my final season in the best, or at least close to the best, shape of my life. My body composition was definitely much better and I felt better about my weight/strength. This has given me a pretty good foundation for the transition into normal life as I am relatively lean, but still have a lot of excess fat to lose. Depending on how the year went, last year at this time I had in mind two versions of myself, one that would pursue the NFL, and one that would not, given the path that I ended up on, I am happy with how the year went and how I got to this point.

Where I am at right now is pretty much where I envisioned myself being if I did not end up pursuing the NFL. I weighed in on the 1st at 265 which is roughly 30-35 lbs down from where I was when playing, and 43 lbs down from where I started the season at. All of this weight loss has happened in the last month or so as I have restricted my diet and changed up my workouts. My goals now are to look like I can lift a lot of weight, but not necessarily be able to lift a lot of weight. This is different from before because I used to want to lift a lot of weight without really caring for my appearance. I have had a relatively restricted diet this past month, maintaining a pretty significant caloric deficit with high protein intake and an emphasis on hypertrophy and cardio. I am using all of the knowledge that I have gained over the past decade of training which is quite fun.

Looking forward to this coming year, I am hoping to continue to lose weight over the next few weeks to a month or two and get to a place where I am happy with how I look and can settle into a maintenance diet and lifestyle. I already know how hard it was to try to maintain being 300 lbs, so I feel like getting to a place around 250 lbs will allow me to eat when I am hungry and live a relatively normal lifestyle without worrying about messing up my body composition. I will definitely be taking advantage of the next 4 months as I will have food prepared for me and a gym a short walk away because I know once I graduate I will have to buy and prepare all of my own food, pay for a gym membership, and I will also have significantly less free time to be able to coordinate the different aspects of fitness. I truly have no idea where I will be or what I will be doing a year from now, but I hope that I am able to continue to get my weight down, get fit, and not revert back to how I used to be.

Reading/Listening

This year I finished out by reading 108 total books (actually finished the final one on the 31st). This is a function of both reading and listening to audiobooks, primarily audiobooks as I find it is easier to fit them into my day as I can listen to them while driving, doing chores, or just going on a walk. It is often hard to find the time to sit still and read a physical book, plus I feel that I can get just as much out of an audiobook as reading a book. My strategy for the past year was just to read as much as I could and get exposure to a lot of different topics. I really have not been reading a lot since probably middle school, and so finishing 2020 having read 30 books really set me up for a great year in 2021. I do not think I will get quite as high a total count in 2022 because I only read one book during the fall semester, and I will likely be quite busy with work once I finish this semester. That being said, I think that this year has given me a solid foundation for going forward, and I am excited to continue to read and reread books going into 2022. 

Podcasts also became a huge part of my life in 2021 for the first time. I was very dismissive of podcasts for a while, mainly because they seemed antisocial to me given that most of the podcasts that I had heard about were just normal people or famous people just talking about things. I never really gave them a chance to provide value to my life, but I am so glad that through the recommendations of friends and family I have built up a repertoire of different podcasts because I have learned a tremendous amount from them. I think I have amassed likely well over 400 hours of content this past year, and I think that each of the different shows has provided value to my life. A lot of my reading and exercise habits have been directly influenced by things I have learned or heard on podcasts, and so I look forward to a 2022 filled with similar improvements. 

School

School-wise, I finished out the first semester pretty strong. I do not have all of my grades back yet, but I am anticipating getting at least a B or better in all of my classes which I am happy with. As I have mentioned several times throughout the past year on this blog, during my gap year I really had a different attitude towards my classes than I had my first three years of school, and it influenced the classes that I chose as well as how I went about engaging with those classes. I think that my attitude this semester was far better than it had been previously, and I am reaping the rewards of that. I have selected my two final classes with this same goal in mind, and I am excited to finish out my college career strong and not worry too much about the outcomes. I realize that at this point, my GPA is pretty unlikely to change, so I am not concerned with what my grades in classes end up being, but more so that I actually learn from them and benefit in some meaningful way.

Work

This past year I primarily was working part time for the hedge fund that I interned with during the summer of 2020. This turned into a job that I continued during my gap year, and also still contribute to now and then when I have free time. This was a tremendously fruitful opportunity for me because I was able to gain a lot of knowledge and experience while also being able to support various trips and activities during the year. I am also very appreciative of the relationships that I have been able to build as a result of this opportunity. I am not sure what I will be doing after graduation, but I feel that I have done a good enough job to be able to return there after graduation if needed; however, that is not my plan and my boss is aware of this. I will take the next few months to try to reach out to alumni and apply to various jobs with the hopes that I find a good match. I feel like I am a pretty hirable candidate and versatile enough to succeed and excel in most scenarios so I am not that worried about finding something, more worried about finding something that I will genuinely enjoy. I also think that most people who are on par with me in the job market already have secured offers and I am coming a bit late to the process, but we will see if that is a good or bad thing in the long run.

Social

This year was a bit odd socially given the state of the global pandemic, but I was able to grow closer with my friends that live close to me and build up some virtual connections as well. I have a core group of friends that has not really changed all that much in the past several years, with some of the friendships extending back nearly 20 years. I know that many of the people whom I consider friends right now will likely be friends for life, so I am not too concerned with losing them nor making a lot of new friends, although meeting new people should be one of my goals for this year. I have one more semester left at school and I hope I can branch out and meet some more people since Princeton really is such an amazing place with a lot of interesting people from all over. After I graduate, where I live will depend largely on my work. I am not too nervous about moving to a new city, but it will definitely be an entirely new experience for me. I have not really travelled much in my life, actually I have travelled more in the last year or so than I have in my life, so moving somewhere new on my own will present its own set of new experiences and challenges. It is exciting looking forward to a year from now because I really cannot predict where I will be or how things will shake out. I know some of the people with whom I will likely remain close, but I am sure a lot of new and interesting relationships will be made along the way.

Other

Lastly before I get to the familiar gratitude section, I wanted to discuss this blog. This blog is something that came about in January of 2021, and now that it is January 2022, I thought it would be cool to reflect on how it has gone so far. I started this blog mainly as a way to keep track of the books that I was reading, and also get into the habit of some sort of writing/journaling because reading and writing are things that I enjoyed a lot growing up, but got away from in highschool and my first three years of college. So far I think that it has been pretty rewarding and I enjoy having the ability to go back and look at posts from different periods in my life although I have not done much of that yet. I have not been super consistent about posting every single week, sometimes making longer posts for stretches of two or three weeks, or posting my Sunday update midway through the week, but all in all, I think it is a cool thing to have out there. It definitely helps with introductions to strangers, and I have found that family members appreciate having a window into my life since I tend to keep to myself in my day to day life. 

My plan for now is to continue doing weekly posts/updates on here and then see if I get tired of it, want to switch the format, or want to switch to a different type of site. I honestly chose blogger because I had used it once before, but I think that there are definitely better tools out there so this site may also keep a similar format but switch to something like medium instead. I do like the fact that many of the posts on this site have not been viewed by anybody, and some only viewed by a handful, because it makes it easier to write knowing that there is not necessarily an audience that I am writing for. The good thing about the internet is that this site will stay up as long as I keep it up, and I have no plans of taking it down anytime soon. Even if I forget about it, many years from now I hope that I will be able to go back and see some of the things that I was thinking about, learning, and dealing with and how my ideas about the world have changed over time.

Gratitude

After all of the ups and downs of the year, it is important to step back and try to gain some perspective. I think that this year and all of the opportunities that I have had have really made me realize how fortunate I am in pretty much every area of my life. Although this kind of sounds like a brag, it really isn't, and I am trying to put some perspective on my life. I am very lucky to live where I do, with the family and friends that I have, with the brain and body that I have. All of these things have combined to put me in a position of playing a division one sport at arguably the best college in the country with who knows what coming next. It is easy when we are wrapped up in the chaos of everyday life to think that if we had a little more money or fewer problems or this that and the other that we would be happy. 

I have been trying to step back from things and take the wisdom from a few different stories that I have heard. One of them is about the Chinese father who repeats saying "maybe so, maybe not. We'll see.", Shakespeare saying "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," and Jocko Willink's "Good." These ideas and others like them have helped me to try and look at things in a different light. I know that if I was a bit shorter, fatter, poorer, weaker, or had worse friends and family, that if I woke up in my current shoes I would be thrilled. It will definitely sound dumb as it seems to be coming from a place of arrogance, but I think it is important to try to live Kanye West's statement when he says "They claim you never know what you got 'til it's gone, I know I got it, I don't know what y'all on." I would hate to be somebody who suffers their whole life and goes through all of these ups and downs just to look back and realize that I had it pretty good all along. 
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