2023 in Review (edited)

>> This post is super late.

I set myself the lofty goal to “write” and work on my creative projects more this year and you can see from the dearth of posts (this is only the second one¹) that I have not succeeded. In my defence, I chose to do a postgraduate degree (honours).

I was not mentally prepared for that endeavour.

Having finished four and a half years of study in semester 1 of 2022, I intended to take the second half of the year off but ended up working part-time and I fell out of the mindset of a student: the pressure of deadlines, the anxiety of rushing between classes, all of that faded away. And boy did I not expect how hard it was going to be to get back into it.

I expected postgrad to be hard, partly because it would be more demanding than undergrad, and partly because it would require more self motivation than I had. As there was a research component to my degree, I expected to read papers and to investigate topics, but I also thought there would be a lot of guidance along the way. My expectations were incorrect.

I had a lot of freedom over the topics of my assignments; each one could have a different topic or I could reuse some topics provided I was building upon the work. This freedom was liberating in that so many options were now open to me and yet it was also terrifying in that everything was up to me.

There was no roadmap that guaranteed that at the end of the semester, I would have a well researched topic I had to write an essay on. So, there were many assignments I cobbled together at the last minute, sometimes submitting late, and often staying up till four or five in the morning the days before it was due, hoping I was writing something coherent.

Many things didn’t pan out the way I thought they would either. In semester 1, for the field methods course, I had to widen my topic because the language we were investigating used the same word for various different adverbs in English, e.g. very, quite and this wouldn’t be enough for an essay. And in semester 2, I made the hard decision to pivot my research project topic since I wouldn’t have any insights² to contribute to my original topic.

But it wasn’t all bad.

The experience taught me that I actually do have skills. This was a revelation to me. For one of my assignments, I retested the statistical analysis presented in a paper and also tested some of their assumptions about the data, implementing the tests using Python. Guess my degree was worth it. That was an assignment I was genuinely happy with.

It was also a good year on the people and social front. I made friends and met new people. I got to know some of my coworkers better. And we finally found some new excs to take over the student club I’m a part of.

So even though I constantly said to anyone who asked that it was hell, there was also a bright side.

a revelation ¶

Throughout the entire year, my supervisor tried to hammer the idea into us that “we won’t know how to do something until we start doing it” and that the only way to know is to practice, so he made us, a lot. However, I didn’t truly internalise it until very late into the year.

In October, I went to the book launch³ of someone I went to primary school with and her experience writing a novel echoed my supervisor’s message and it finally clicked. The book launch itself was pretty interesting, and it was really inspiring to hear about her lifelong dream to be an author and her journey.

I only understood the idea in practice when I literally started writing up the ten thousand words of my research project and I started to see how I was to structure it. It became clearer to me what I might need to explain, where certain topics might have to go, and what I might have to focus on or leave out. In fact, I was on a roll. I got to the point where it was largely done and just needed polishing. There was an area that I could’ve fleshed out and integrated more into the essay but ironically I had to force myself to stop editing and revising until the deadline because I had other essays to write. All in all, I am happy with how my research project turned out.

On a non-academic note, the idea only sunk in for my creative projects when a book YouTuber I watch finished writing a novel she was working on and I realised that if I don’t work on my projects, no one will. The inspiration that was seeded by my school friend’s book launch was converted into motivation by the YouTuber’s progress. Unfortunately, this determination only prevailed for a few weeks before other obligations got in the way.

reflection ¶

Do I regret the year? On balance, no. If I could go back in time, I would obviously prepare myself more before the year started, definitely do my readings, and try to stay on track instead of letting each week pass by. Despite the constant stress of pending assignments and the sleep deprivation induced by extremely late (or early) nights, I would do it again. There were both highs and lows this year, and that’s alright.

As to further studies in academia, I’ve joked about going back for a masters if I can’t figure out a career, and maybe even becoming a professor as a last resort, but the honest answer is that having experienced academia, I don’t think it’s the right fit for me (and I don’t want to relive the pain).

But enough about uni, what else have I done?

books ¶

I read a surprising number of books this year: 16 in fact. Granted, many of them were quite short.

The first two I read, at roughly the same time, were Le petit prince but in English, and Mr Salary by Sally Rooney. Mr Salary is only the second work by Sally Rooney that I’ve read after Normal People, but I feel like it sets a trend. Her writing style is interesting but I don’t like her endings, especially in Normal People; the characters’ conflict seemed to be resolved towards the end but then the ending made the situation so open-ended and uncertain. The Little Prince I read to see what the hype was; I get it now.

Next I read Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a short Japanese collection of stories, actually a novel according to the blurb, revolving around a café where you can go back in time, and though relationships and familial dynamics are not my usual choice, the stories quite moving (I cried, okay?).

This decent cast of books was then followed by a book I absolutely despise: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. This book somehow manages to entirely disregard the old cliché, “show, don’t tell,” and not in a good way. For a book that is ostensibly inspiring and spiritual in nature, it was incredibly flat, not immersive, and is essentially entirely narrated; we are not left to infer the characters’ thoughts and emotions or to imagine the events for ourselves, they are simply described to us.

After that, I read Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom, an early short story by Sylvia Plath that was a refreshing palate cleanser and gives me the courage to read some of her other works in the future.

As a child, for some reason, even though I was interested, I never read Skulduggery Pleasant. I may have leafed through some of the books but I never actually read them. Well, for a period, my childhood longing seized me and I promptly devoured the first four books. With the intention to continue, I bought the next four books but early into the fifth book I got tired of the main character and stopped reading.

The next thing I read was Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, a collection of strange and interesting stories with magical realistic and metaphysical themes. They are thought-provoking, philosophical, conceptual, existential and confusing all at the same time. I strongly recommend it,

Then I read Three Japanese Short Stories by Akutagawa et al. and Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer by Wendell Berry. I bought Wendell Berry’s essay on an impulse and to pre-emptively reject it by the title, but I found his arguments really thoughtful and well-reasoned. Akutagawa is a notable Japanese author and this tiny collection is the only book containing his work I could find here in NZ on Book Depository (before it closed 😞).

On a kick from Ficciones, the next Spanish work I read was The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, a collection of “scary” stories by Mariana Enriquez that I would classify more as existential or implication in its horror rather than truly a scare.

Next I went on an Irish kick, reading Small Things Like These and Foster, both by Claire Keegan. They were both moving stories and one was about a little known dark period of Ireland’s history but again I didn’t like their endings. Like Sally Rooney (who’s also Irish 👀), the endings introduce a sense of uncertainty that I did not like.

The last book I finished this year was Crying in H Mart, a memoir by Michelle Zauner of the band Japanese Breakfast about the loss of her mother and the subsequent impact on her cultural identity. I am lucky enough to not have lost anyone important in my life, but as a diaspora Asian the book prompted some serious reflection on my own links to my cultural identity. It’s so good.

I think there’s a couple trends to be found here.

For the first time in a while, I can actually say what it is I like to read.

I enjoy Japanese and Spanish fiction, and like Irish authors. Though Irish fiction is largely in English, I will to broadly label my preferred genre as translated fiction.

keyboards ¶

You know how people warn you not to take drugs because you can get addicted?

Well, I recently fell back into the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole. My first foray into the hobby was during COVID when I was bored in lockdown and decided to dispense with my “discretionary capital”. But this time, I heard about the imminent launch of a more mass producible version of an “endgame” keyboard⁴ and I got really caught up in the hype.

I ordered the keyboard.

In anticipation, I even opened up a keycap set I bought three years ago and refused to open because I didn’t historically like the type of plastic they are made from, but holy sh*t these keycaps are so good.

An earlier me was going to tell you I haven’t started spending again yet but as above that’s a lie.

I’ll let you know how I find the keyboard and if it’s my endgame board (spoiler: this is foreshadowing).

in closing ¶

As always there’s probably more I could say but I need to post this so for now I’ll just say:

Thank you for reading, Merry Holidays, and Happy New Year !