Here it is, 2022 is in the bag. Another year, another write-up. Overall, it was similar to 2021 in a lot of aspects, but also different.

There were deep moments of poopiness similar to 2021, but also some really nice highs.

Overall, 2022 was an improvement over the dumpster fire that was 2021, and I fully expect 2023 will be an improvement over 2022 for reasons I’ll mention in this post.

Let’s start with the stuff that went well.

I got to travel a little bit this year, which was a welcome gift. It kickstarted with my return back to Toronto for one of my dear friend’s wedding. It was nice seeing some of my old college buddies and catching up.

A few days later, I was gifted with a free trip to a luxury resort in Anguilla thanks to a stroke of luck from one of my besties. Timing just worked out and my buddy needed a plus one for his company retreat. This was great. The food and resort were outstanding, but there was a tragedy on this trip unfortunately as my friend lost a coworker in a freak accident. This truly was a freak accident and a reminder that life is precious, chaotic, and can be taken away at any time. Make every moment count.

After Anguilla, I spent some time in Ottawa and Montreal before heading back to Niagara. I really appreciate all 3 cities and their unique charms, and have an appreciation for each every time I return.

After that, I went on an unforgettable trip to Banff, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver before heading back to Thailand. The highlight of the trip was definitely the Bobbie Burns lodge near Banff, which was a truly unforgettable experience featuring daily helicopter rides, incredible hiking and via ferratas through beautiful mountains and glaciers. The company was great, too. Hanging out and laughing with old friends is never a bad idea.

On my return to Thailand, I had the pleasure of going to the beach town of Hua Hin, and stayed at some really beautiful resorts. Thailand is so beautiful and continues to impress me more and more.

mailfloss was also a highlight this year. While in the weeds it felt like a grind, with tons of scaling issues popping up left and right, these all felt like high-quality problems. And because of that, I mostly felt grateful that there are an increasing number of customers that trust mailfloss to help them.

Near the end of 2022, I also hired a junior developer to help with some mailfloss features that I have been putting off for too long. She’s been fantastic and I look forward to all the great things she’s going to do in 2023.

I suppose my mental health could go either in the negative or positive bucket, but I’ll put it in the positive bucket because it’s been getting better.

Still suffering from the beating I took in 2021, I felt mentally crushed at the beginning of 2022. This lasted for at least the first half of the year. It wasn’t until I started to travel that I was able to snap myself out of it.

There’s still work that needs to be done here. I still feel I get too easily angered and irritable. I get anxious at seemingly random moments for no reason. I’d like to get this under control because this year I could really see how my mood swings affected my relationship. The meditation app Breethe and the therapy app Bloom have helped me a lot, and I feel that they’ll continue to do so in 2023.

In terms of things that didn’t go well this year, I’ll start with my health. Actually, it wasn’t so bad leading up until my trip to Bobbie Burns. However, I had a nagging knee injury that kept bothering me as I continued to train. All the hiking during Bobbie Burns finally put it over the edge, and during the trip the pain was so intense that I was taking aspirin just so I could continue hiking.

My knee still hasn’t fully healed and I’ve taken it easy on exercise ever since. I really thought I’d be healed by now, but I haven’t. I found a great physiotherapist that has taken the pain from an 8 down to a 2, but ideally, I’d like to take the pain down to 0 before I start training again. I may try shockwave therapy as there’s a clinic nearby, as well as start doing knees over toes type exercises if the pain persists, which seems likely at this point.

Disappointingly, I’ve also noticed a decline in my eyesight. I got Lasik surgery maybe 5 years ago, and sadly my vision has been declining, first slowly, but increasingly quicker as time has passed. I think I may need to do a round 2 sooner rather than later. I’ve been doing the Vision Gym, which has helped, but I fear I’ll never get back to my prior glory of perfect vision without surgical assistance.

I only read about 4 or 5 books this year, which is terrible. The book that I recommend from this years reading is “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”, which contains nuggets of great wisdom. My excuse for not reading much is I’ve been putting in a lot of late hours staring at a screen, but honestly I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I think reading will also take a backseat in 2023 as I continue to focus on mailfloss, but I plan to learn through various other means.

For 2023, I feel it’ll be much of the same. I hope mailfloss will grow quicker next year, and I plan to make that happen with some good hired help and some coaching. I plan to up my education through paid courses and online coaching as well. I’m also thinking of doing online therapy sessions to further improve and strengthen my mental well-being. If I can grow mailfloss quicker in 2023 despite turbulent macro-economic conditions, I feel like it will be really well-positioned to be a market leader in the years that follow. I am prepared to make the sacrifices needed to make that happen, and with a little luck and elbow grease I think 2023 is going to be a good one.

Happy New Year and I wish you the best in 2023. It seems like it will be a chaotic one with unfavorable economic conditions, but you’ll be ok. Hug and kiss your loved ones and all the very best to you and yours.

Wow, I’m glad that one is over. That was a tough one. In a decade of tough and shitty years, that one was the worst. Maybe the toughest year I’ve had. There wasn’t a week that went by without any sort of chaos. I thought it was going to be much better than 2020. I was so wrong. It just goes to show how little I know and how unpredictable the future is.

I won’t get into the specifics, because frankly they hurt thinking about them. I feel like all areas of my life suffered in one form or another repeatedly throughout the year. Physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, financially. I took a thrashing non-stop. A whole can of whoop-ass. It was tough, man…

But, it’s over, so screw it. It’s in my rear-view now and I’m looking forward. There are still problems I need to address lingering from the previous year, but they’ll get resolved. Anyway, I do feel like 2022 is going to be a better year. But that’s what I said about 2021 and boy was I wrong. I feel like it will be better but again I know so little. I just feel like all of the pain and suffering I went through in 2021 has allowed a smoother ride going forward.

Take mailfloss, for example. There were serious growing pains that required long, long, lonngggg hours and many late, stressful nights. A lot of issues that plagued the system have been resolved. And mailfloss grew quite steadily. I’m very grateful and thankful for that. And I do believe that things will get better from here on out.

I didn’t do as much reading this year as in previous years. Books have taken a back burner in my life in recent years and that’s unfortunate, but I still try to make time to read some. This year I read mostly business books, many from Mike Michalowicz who has some gems like Profit First, Clockwork, The Pumpkin Plan and Fix This Next.

Healthwise this was probably the worst year I’ve had in the past 8 or 9 years. For the first half of the year, I hardly did much exercising and ate whatever the heck I wanted. Finally, I bought some calisthenics equipment in the summer and put it to daily use but even that wasn’t as much as I would have liked. Once I got the equipment consistency wasn’t really the problem, more like volume and effectiveness. I hope I can improve that this year.

The biggest takeaway from 2020 aside from the overarching theme of knowing very little about the future is to stay in the game. If it’s important to you, stay in the game! With health, staying in the game might mean eating healthily consistently or working out regularly to see results. In business, it might mean suffering for a while but staying in the game will allow you to weather those tough storms. If there’s a relationship worth fighting for, then fight for it. Stay in the game.

I’m happy 2021 is over and I’m excited for 2022. I feel like the future is going to be brighter starting now. There are surely going to be obstacles, but as long as I stay in the game, I’ll be ready for them. At least, that’s the plan. Wishing you and your family all the best for a prosperous 2022. And if you’re hurting, know that it won’t last forever. Hang in there, take care of yourself, and don’t be afraid to ask for some help when needed. Stay in the game.

I’m sitting in a hotel room in quarantine as I write this and contemplate what the heck just happened in 2020. To sum, it was a train wreck. What started out as a promising year turned from bad to worse as the pandemic hit. I started 2020 in Mexico City with my buddy and really enjoyed myself.

There was news reports of some new coronavirus from China as I was there but didn’t really think much about it. I very distinctly remember my brother and girlfriend making a huge stink about it, but nobody else I talked to expected what was about to happen. But at the same time, I noticed I was getting weird, negative reactions as I continued my journey in Colombia.

I have strong memories in February and March of cab drivers getting a little hostile and rude. I had one Uber driver writing to her friend on WhatsApp that she thought she was going to get coronavirus from me, in Spanish, as she was driving. Rude. I had waiters who didn’t want to serve me and pharmacists try to shoo me away. I had a bunch of immigration officers straight up yell at me because I was Asian. This was in Panama, about as close as I would get to Canada before heading further south to Argentina and Brazil. So I had to make a decision quickly as to continue my journey or return home. I had a few hours to decide as I headed to the airport. That was a bad day. A few hours later, the WHO declared a pandemic, and Canada, Brazil, and Argentina locked their borders.

The next 6 months were pretty much the same. I left the house a grand total of 5 times and basically worked and worked out to pass the days. I picked up a PS4 as I was starting to burn out from work a bit and would spend the hour before bedtime playing some games. I played more games in 2020 than the previous decade combined and have had my fill for the next little while.

Work itself was great. mailfloss is so much further along now and grew quite well. As a product, it is so much better than the competitors in so many ways and I’m very happy with where it finished in 2020.

The last quarter of the year was an insane blitz. As I was planning my work goals I read some quote from Elon Musk or something about condensing your 10-year plan down to 6 months, and I decided to give it a try. I don’t even remember the quote, or if it was Elon, and probably saw it on some stupid motivational Instagram post. But I thought I’d give it a try anyway, and went balls out.

Around the same time, other things sort of sprung up out of the blue. Some countries’ restrictions were loosening up, and I needed to get back to Thailand. That process was not easy. There was an obstacle every step of the way. I’d book a plane ticket, and the transiting country would ban transit. I’d buy some insurance, and the insurance requirement would change. I’d book a covid test at a testing location, and all of a sudden customs was seizing the test samples. I’d call every doctor’s office in the city asking if they’d write a doctor’s note and all would say no. The one office that said yes would continue to say yes after following up with them four times, until it was time to get the note. Everything dragged on and on. Everything took longer than usual. Everything was a damn negotiation.

Then there were the junkies, dealers, and crackheads. How do I even write this part, I’m not sure. Let me just say that there are some real fucking scumbags on this planet, and they are close by. Not just in the movies or tv shows. Not far away in the news. They’re right there around the corner. And when you have to deal with them, it ain’t pretty.

If I learned anything in 2020, it is that the bar got fucking low. It is so easy to be just a little bit better these days. To be a little kinder, a little more patient, a little more empathetic. Because everyone else is miserable and it shows. The new average is simply not to suck, and it’s sad. But you can’t blame people, either. When you have news as unreliable and inaccurate as we’ve had, politicians and governments who don’t know what they’re doing, social media companies being incredibly greedy and irresponsible, and corporations who dgaf about anything except increasing share prices, it’s no wonder everyone is upset.

The only thing you can do is be better. Even if you get the shit end of the stick over and again, as I did in many scenarios. I remember scrubbing the back of a toilet covered in someone else’s shit on Christmas day and thinking fuck this shit (literally), but that’s how it goes sometimes. You can whine about it or you can be better. You’re allowed to be upset, and you’re allowed to be pissed, and you’re allowed to complain. You can do all those things and still be better. To be just a little kinder. To be a little more patient. Even when you are arguing with dispatch who is lying to you when you call 911 for help. Even when the police show up 4 hours late to an emergency situation. Even when your friends ghost you and are completely unreliable. These things and more all happened to me in 2020. Oh, and never forget, nobody cares.

But I refuse to stoop to these new normal levels of shit. For no other reason except because I can. Hard times make hard (wo)men. The others can fold and be shitty and weak and petty. I choose not to because I’m better. And you’re better.

This year I didn’t read that much, only 9 books, the least amount I’ve read in about a decade. I was really focused on business, and by the time I was finished, I was too knackered to read and use more brain, and figured video games would be a better use of my spare time. I felt that this was the right move in 2020 but do hope I will read a little more this year. The books that I did read were mostly business type books and I thoroughly enjoyed a number of them including “Building a Story Brand”, “Obviously Awesome”, “Traction”, and “The Ultimate Sales Machine”.

2020 was the year I became somewhat fluent in Spanish and made massive gains at a school in Colombia. By the time I left, I felt quite confident and was having conversations with locals, could ask for directions, order food, go shopping, and felt comfortable doing so. This made me quite happy as Spanish is a language I’ve been trying to learn for years.

The last thing I wanted to mention is my gym gains. I was also quite happy here. I lifted every day despite previously lifting only 3 days a week. The conventional wisdom is that you need rest days to recover. And yet I was breaking personal bests and felt great on a daily regimen. I felt the focus in the gym was a nice break from sitting in front of the computer and I liked seeing the numbers go up.

I’m glad 2020 is over and I am positive 2021 is going to be a much better year in just about every way. If you went through a hard time and are possibly still going through one know that you are not alone and things will get better as they always do. Hang in there, you got this.

I tweeted this earlier in the week:

 

Criticism is easy, introspection is hard. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/opinion/sunday/secret-ingredient-for-success.html?_r=0

 

 

It links to a nytimes article talking about the secret ingredient to success: self-awareness. It is one of those “well duh” ideas that doesn’t get enough attention and is often overlooked in favour of life hacks, short cuts, and sound bytes. But self-awareness is HUGE, and it is one of those things that can instantly give you superpowers if you have it fine tuned. When something happens to you in your life, whether it be randomly on the street, online on a social network, at your job, in a relationship, do you notice what your first reaction usually is? Mine depends (and I bet I’m not alone on this). I’ll either attribute it to good/bad luck depending on the outcome, or if it’s something I had to take a direct action on and it turned out well I’ll most likely attribute it to my skill, and if it turned out poorly I’ll blame the circumstance or the person. If I am blaming the person, I’ll usually attribute the fault to their personality rather than the situation, but if for any reason it happens to be my fault, I usually blame the circumstance. Sound familiar? I know, right? I’m a total mind reader. No, just kidding (or am I???). Social Psychology has a bunch of terms for what I just described. You can go look up Fundamental Attribution Error, Self-Serving bias or Actor-Observer bias. It just so happens to be a bunch of attribution biases and heuristics we’ve been blessed to have.

 

Awesome…not. But that’s the initial reaction, what happens next? For a lot of people, it ends there. That was that, there’s the story you just told yourself. But for others, those who have good self-awareness, that’s just scratching the surface. Those who have the capacity for introspection tend to take it way further and question, analyze, and challenge their deeply set held beliefs, biases, and assumptions. It’s not fun. It ain’t pretty. It’s quite hard. And that’s exactly why many people don’t do it. Here’s a quote that I think applies here, from superstar bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman:

 

“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but ain’t nobody want to lift this heavy ass weight!”

 

If you think that quote is about bodybuilding, think again. The hardest stuff worth doing almost always has some awesome payoffs. Introspection. Do it.

 

Caution: self-criticism is not the same as self-awareness. You can go overboard on the former, but almost never on the latter.