I got a job that doubled my income and gave me the free time to do things like start a garden, learn macrame and spend a lot more uninterrupted time with my family. It was really life changing.

If I could undo this year I might though. I had 5 family members die including my grandma who raised me, my wife and I had a devastating miscarriage, my causing got hit by a car and may not be able to walk, I was diagnosed with a heart condition and put on lifelong medication and still might need open heart surgery, my deadbeat dad got out of jail and has been harrasing my mom and sister, and the icing on the cake, last week our best cat died.

Everything sucked. 2023 was a calamity for me. I lost my best friend, I had a burnout, I got sick a lot, and it forced me to take 2 full weeks off to take care of myself in early December.

Those 2 weeks for myself are arguably the best thing I had this year however. I’ll try to repeat this every year.

This summer I went to a vocational school in Lanzhou, China for two weeks and learned how to make hand-pulled noodles. I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, this year it was finally possible because Covid restrictions got lifted.