I'm not a romantic person, and I don't think much of 1 Jan to be a new year.
To me, time is like a circle, there's no beginning or end.
The Earth orbits the Sun, and it so happened that someone at a point in time decided that X position is 1 Jan. A year could easily have started on 15 June and it would have no difference to us.
Similarly, I don't think much about birthdays and other days' of anniversaries.
The idea that the Earth has made one round around the Sun doesn't mean much, and just by the passing of one second, people won't change.
Like... people who make new year resolutions... thinking... maybe I want to lose weight this year.
31 Dec 23:59:59 one second til 1 Jan 00:00:00
That one second doesn't change anything. It's not a miracle 1 second to make someone more disciplined.
So anyway, just for the sake of it, I'll recap some some of the stuff that happened this year that was pretty important to me.
I started posting more regularly from Aug onwards.
My game that I was planning on died... no issues, lost some money, but I'm not too smashed up about it.
I went overseas quite a lot this year. When I was younger, I thought that it would be cool to be travelling a lot for work, but after following my wife around, it's really tiring and just disruptive of a normal routine life, maybe others may like the excitement of all that travel, but we don't.
My wife's work has brought us to Paris, one of the better trips this year. Made me a little depressed, realized that every country is the same. When we travel, we don't really see much of the normal life unless we actively keep our eyes open and talk to locals. Cos most of the time, many travelers travel for vacation and just want to see the nice sights. Everyone struggles in their own way in whichever country, slightly different but mainly everyone just wants/needs more money.
Went to the UK as well, London and Scotland, less exciting than France, nonetheless, it was educational. Went to Europe twice this year. Never thought that would ever happen...
The year pretty much ended with Freegan mentality, I was pretty involved in freegan activities the past 2-3 months. It's an interesting idea of getting free stuff whenever possible. I'm trying to streamline it and see how to incorporate it in my life. Dumpster diving has been interesting. Although, now I wonder how much I would do it, cos I don't really need more stuff in the house, it's fun to get free stuff, but in the end, I don't want/need them anyway. It's similar to buying stuff that I don't need, even though it's free, it just clutters the house. I'm still trying to dispose, push out some of the stuff I've collected. It's slow and steady, things are moving, but yet I wonder, if I didn't collect the items in the first place, I won't need to think about giving or selling them away.
Free groceries is interesting, although I don't really find it fun, I may pick up more of it this coming year. Cos I actually consume it, as compared to material stuff, which I don't consume and it clogs up the house.
This year... what do I want to try to do...
Cut my monthly discretionary spending to $500 or slightly more. I think $500-$650 would be a good range, then I could drop off one UOB One card. It's a challenge for the fun of it, it's really easy to do if I want to, I just need to stop going for weekend meals at restaurants, but I'm trying to see how to balance that out. Try to keep a similar standard of lifestyle with a cut in outflow, that's the challenge. Simply cutting lifestyle to drop expenses is easy. The difficulty is to keep lifestyle similar or constant and drop expenses more than any drop in lifestyle.
Try more new things this year. Similar to freegan thinking, I hope to meet more new people and try new interesting ideas so that I can learn more funky stuff and post about it.
Ok, that's it for this post... I don't really like doing such posts, but yet, to jump straight into my next post seems so... abrupt and direct, so thought I would start the new year with a light post about the last year.
<<PREVIOUS POST // NEXT POST>>
Did you like this post? If so, could you "blanjah" me 1/4 cup of my morning coffee pls.
Many thanks for continuing to come to this blog to read my posts.