What Are The Chances?! 2023 Year In Review

The year is quickly coming to a close and I’m almost out of time to do a recap. I’ve done one every year since I started blogging, so I’m keeping the tradition going. Here’s my whirlwind of a 2023 year in review, highlighting the goals I set in my “every day is the best day” post and a short summary of how I actually did. Overall, the theme of the year felt like – What are the chances?!

The reason I say that is it seemed like things were always going wrong, amiss, or occurring strangely whether it was Murphy’s law at play, weird odds, or coincidence.

Related reading: Celebrate Your Wins And Remember Your Losses

2023 Failures (5)

Adopt the mindset: Every day is the best day. I started the year off so happy, but then I let my mother and stress drag me down. I was pretty miserable and stressed 24/7 for the first 6.5+ months of the year trying to help my mother with some complex family matters. It didn’t help that she effectively verbally abused me on multiple occasions. Her situation is complex, however, so even though her true self doesn’t intend to wound my soul, I went through a lot. Thankfully, things are better (for now).

Get back to writing regularly. Ugh, total fail. I think I wrote less than 20 articles this year. Terrible. At least I guest co-hosted about 14 Financial Samurai Podcast episodes, the best personal finance podcast, and updated roughly 100 pages and 250 posts. It could be higher than that because I forgot to count sometimes. Still not impressive by count, but better than nothing.

Get to the last mile. I got some stuff done for sure, but I don’t feel like I made any significant progress here. Fail.

Be more amenable and flexible to coaching and advice. I really don’t take well to feedback. Although maybe it depends on the person and situation. I take constructive criticism from my dance teacher easily, but I don’t take work feedback well. I got way too defensive on a lot of things this year. Fail.

Continue to get death files prepared. Neither of my parents have completed the death file templates I sent to them. It is so hard to get anyone to do something. But at least my mom did half of hers. My dad has done zero, zilch, nada. I did some updates on my own docs, but still need to do more. Fail.

2023 Meh’s and Pushes (6)

Feel and look healthier. I have more gray hairs than 2022, but it seems a lot of them went back into hibernation in Q4. I am proud that I lost more weight than I expected by Q3/Q4, but with the holiday sweets I’m afraid to get back on the scale. See: The Ideal Body Weight Pisses Me Off

Simplify. I got rid of a lot of stuff in prep for moving homes, so that was a win. But I don’t feel I’ve simplified enough yet. Although I’ve unpacked everything that was in boxes, I’m still lacking organizational systems which I need to work on in 2024.

Keep up with learning Chinese. I’ve been helping my son with his homework in Chinese every day now, so I’ve naturally picked up a few things. But overall I don’t feel like I put enough effort into this at all. Meh.

Further train my intern. I did my part and put in a lot of time and energy to train her. Unfortunately, she just didn’t have enough interest or determination to stick with things and keep going. So even though I feel I succeeded in training her, I failed because she quit. Sigh (oops I’m not supposed to sigh).

Laugh more with my kids. I’ve had some great laughs with my kids and have lightened my parenting style some compared to 2022. But I still feel like I have a lot to improve upon. I feel like I’m constantly multitasking and not giving them my 100% attention, so I need to do a better job of taking time outs from busy work and sitting down to play with them.

Tweak my parenting style. Similar to above, I feel I made some improvements, but still have a ways to go. I’ve definitely tried to be more calm around them and less frazzled. I think I’m a lot more chill vs a year ago, so now I have to work on being more fun.

2023 Wins (17)

Stop sighing so much. My daughter called me out on sighing a lot last year. Although I probably still did it in Q1 and Q2 of this year, I feel like I’ve broken this habit. She hasn’t commented on me sighing anytime recently.

Improve my editorial and proofreading skills. I didn’t take any particular classes on this, but I do feel like my copyediting skills have improved with more practice. I still lean on technology to catch things that are easy for the brain to unconsciously autocorrect, but I feel like I’m better at stylistic and clarity edits now.

Get a new laptop. I waited for what seemed like forever to get a new laptop and am so glad I did. My new one is glorious and I’m really thankful I get to use it every day.

Read 3-5 nonfiction books. Win! I read 5 nonfiction books this year that were super helpful for parenting and self awareness. I’m looking forward to reading more in 2024.

Get a new water heater. Success. Changing out any type of appliance is stressful and expensive. But I did it!

Go on more dates. Yes! I feel 2023 was a great year for our social life both independently and together. We definitely went on more dates and outings. Win!

Help my mom with settling her sister’s estate. This is still ongoing, but I have gone above and beyond in this regard. If I think about it too much I get PO’d, but I consider this a big win.

Got my passport replaced. Long story short, I renewed my passport last year then proceded to lose it right before a trip to Japan. I went through hell to get it replaced, but I did it just in time.

Check out: When In Trouble, Remember FULL BENEFIT! A Passport Debacle

Got both kids passports. I was a baby when I got my first passport, but since we had no plans to travel when our kids were born, we put it off. Now that he’s 6 and she’s 4 we felt it was time. His successfully came back a couple weeks ago, and hers came a couple days before year end.

Became a podcast editor. I had no intentions of becoming a podcast editor this year, but I’m glad I did! I’ve learned a lot of useful skills on how to merge audio files, cut out sections and stitch others together, add music, remove background noise, rebalance sound levels, fade in/fade out, etc. It’s time consuming, but a lot of fun.

Moved. After a very long and arduous process, we successfully moved homes. The whole thing took a lot out of me – it is very time consuming to move and we had a lot of issues to sort through – but it was well worth it. We love our new place now and really plan to grow roots here.

Adjusted to less help. We gave up all hired help with weekly childcare and housework in the spring. I really feel this was the right decision for our family. It was exhausting during the summer when both kids were home 24/7, but it made me stronger and adaptable. Now we’re getting some part-time help so we’re able to go on more dates again and work some evenings.

Book proofreading. I took on a big copyediting and proofreading project and found over 25 errors that needed fixing in Buy This, Not That’s second printing. I also updated a lot of charts and stats in this WSJ bestselling book by Sam Dogen. It’s a must-read if you want to improve your finances and make better financial decisions.

New edition of HTEYL. I helped write and edit 50 new pages for the 6th edition of How To Engineer Your Layoff. The book is better and more relevant than ever with the prevalence of layoffs, especially in tech.

Removed a duplicate podcast listing. This was an old error that became a larger problem in 2023, so I did a lot of research and coordinating to get the dupe taken down.

Volunteered at school. For the 2022/2023 school year, I volunteered 24 total hours at my son’s school and 2 hours at my daughters. Her school had far fewer opportunities, but they should increase as she ages up.

Helped with vital records. I helped get official copies of a family member’s death certificate, which my FIL couldn’t figure out. It was required for an annuity to pay out, so I was able to help facilitate closure for that pressing issue.

Dove into a new book project. One of the reasons I spent less time publishing articles is because I was quite busy writing and editing behind the scenes for a new book project. I did a lot of the busy work required for brainstorming chapter titles and talking points, building and rebuilding a solid outline, creating a working Word doc template with all the formatting styles, and piecing together all of the meat. A lot goes into writing a book! See: The Pros and Cons of Being an Author

Well, there you have it. That’s my quick and dirty recap on 2023. By tally, I had the most wins followed by mehs, and fails. So overall, I feel good about that! But I definitely feel like my mom and poor stress and time management robbed me of a lot of time in 2023, especially in the first half. It’s rather pathetic, and I really am the only one to blame. So even though I am quite disappointed in my overall productivity and growth for the year, at least I’m motivated to do better in 2024!

If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to take a thorough look through your sent box, photo albums, and any notes you’ve jotted down over the past 12 months. You’ve likely accomplished a lot more than you can remember off the top of your head too. See you in the new year!