2024 Year in Review

I guess it's a tradition at this point, so I'm not going to waste time reminiscing on how it got started. I'll follow the same template as last year - first re-reading my previous year-in-review post to understand just what I was thinking 365 days ago and then comment on it. It's pretty illuminating in most cases and reminds me of the reason why I started this blog in the first place.

2024 Holidays

The holidays started pretty late this year, I ended up going back home only 2 days before Christmas due to some work/research deadlines. It was pretty stressful leaving and getting everything done (cleaning etc.) but, as with every other time in the last 8 years, I was able to manage it. I thought this break would be less relaxing because I had a lot of work projects to still complete along with studying for interviews. 

I was kind of right in some sense, I definitely felt this break was less "social" than in previous years. I only really spent time with family (the usual civ games with siblings were always fun) but did feel somewhat stressed in the background about the interviews to come in the new year. 

Nonetheless, I was able to feel somewhat relaxed from the 28th until around Jan 2nd (it's 4am and I'm sitting at the dining room table at home writing this post now...). I feel somewhat guilty about not studying much yet, but I recognize that I probably needed to take a break mentally anyway. Somehow, when I'm here, I feel less ambitious about doing AI research or whatever and feel myself slipping into the familiarity of a quiet life in the suburbs (where perhaps I'm a full-time writer). 

The most social thing I did outside of being with family was hanging out with K and A from badminton, when A came to visit Toronto for the first time. I've gotten a lot closer to them in the past year, and we spent almost 14 hours together non-stop doing touristy things in Toronto (CN tower etc). I thought that I might like K at first, but I'm honestly not sure. It sounds weird (and something a "cuck" would say, lmao) but I'd also feel happy if her and A got together too. They are much closer in age and have similar ethnic backgrounds so idk...maybe it's something I can talk to them about in the new year. Either way, I'm grateful for their friendship and, honestly, sometimes I feel so grateful in general that I was able to make close friends and have good opportunities in my career. I've genuinely been feeling more grateful since near the end of 2024, maybe it's because events like A (guy from badminton) death helped put things into perspective...but that's a post for another time :(

Reflections on predictions from last year's blog post

Looks like some of my predictions for what 2024 would look like were as follows:

1.) Continue interviewing at startups and looking for opportunities. Maybe connect with Ali about independent research

2.) Have a real relationship with S?

3.) Sleep 8 hours a day and be consistent

4.) Do a concrete project with C

5.) Get back into writing and polish up HS novel

6.) Do original research

In terms of whether I met them, I would say:

1.) Mostly done, had an offer from Cart earlier on the year (happy I didn't take it), formally started a company with C and did a significant amount of work on it. Maybe didn't really get to "independent" research but I would say that all the startup with C definitely meets this criteria anyway. Oh, I did end up connecting with Ali too about research stuff, though not much came out of it except friendship I guess?

2.) This was probably the strangest one. Coming into 2024, I thought S and I were doing pretty well. We did spend time together but then there was a huge 5-6 month lull in the middle and we kind of rekindled things again in December. Who knows what 2025 will bring with her? I guess that all I've learned is that I shouldn't really worry about it too much, if things are meant to be then they will be.

3.) Hah, no way this happened. My sleep schedule got worst if anything but at least I started doing Saturday morning badminton with K.

4.) Yes, we did a a startup and incorperated a company etc.

5.) Unfortunately, writing took a back seat in 2024, but I felt it was for "good" reasons such as doing startup stuff and/or exercise like badminton/working out. I don't actually feel like I wasted too much time on 2024, which does make me happy.

6.) Similar to previous answers, I would say startup with C covers this.

Overall, seems like I was able to meet most of my goals in 2024, though the sleeping 8 hours and relationship with S were the biggest misses. Now for a more granular breakdown...

Scorecard

Fitness / Physical Health - 4/5

I'm going to be generous here and give myself a higher score than last year. Even though my sleep schedule is still awful, I felt like in addition to consistently working out / badminton, I also made plans to do half-marathon with K next year AND started to eat a lot healthier. I lost over 10 pounds due to eating healthier in general and my body felt noticeable lighter. The only downside is that I felt like my diet / gym schedule kind of fell off track in the last 1-2 months of the year but I'm confident I can get back on track when 2025 starts.

Mental Health -  4/5

I guess no real complaints here, but compared to 2023, there wasn't really much new experiences. I don't remember feeling particularly stressed at any points, but also don't think I did many "new" things like how I traveled to New Orleans last year etc. I think I was just able to focus more on hobbies and/or doing startup stuff which was interesting to me. My mental health might have even been improved from feeling like continued to deepen my friendships with A, K (badminton) and J, E (designer) as well.

Creative Hobbies (Writing, ML research etc.) - 2.5/5

Again, I'm kind of torn here because I really did do a lot of studying for research jobs and even startup stuff with C. But I definitely failed on writing and more "creative" hobbies - I hope this is something I can balance better in 2025 but somehow I'm doubtful especially if I get a new job. I might have to accept that there's just not enough time in the day to be both a great writer (hehe, civ pun) and AI researcher. Maybe I need to just dedicate my life to one of them for 1-2 years and then swap.

Dating / Social - 2/5

Didn't really have time (or care) to go on any dates except seeing S. But nothing really progressed with S anyway though we did see each other quite a bit in December. As I said before, I think I placed too much (unrealistic) hopes on S and I really becoming close in 2024 when I don't think it was really a priority for her to begin with. Anyway, I do still like her and think she's cool (which is rare) but I'm going to be more casual about in 2025 and prioritize other things instead.

There's also still the fact that maybe I could be with K but who knows..?

Career / Academics - 3/5

This one is also hard to judge but I guess the main datapoint is getting rejected for promo which, objectively, is a setback in my career. I stopped doing research with J's lab (probably a good thing for my mental health too...) so not much happened on that front either. I definitely feel apathetic at work now, especially with A leaving and I think it is really time to move on. But yeah...not much progress here except the usual EE rating at work and maybe writing a retrieval paper.

Reflections for 2025

So...what are my goals for the new year? I'll try to list them in priority order so that I can read this again in a year and see how colossally wrong I was:

1.) Secure AI research job, start it in Feb-Mar and make a great first impression

2.) Fix sleep schedule , get 8 hours a day

3.) Finish editing story / send to Gail / publish it

3.) Half-Marathon and/or badminton tournament

4.) Real relationship with S or K ...?

Final Thoughts

Somehow, I made it to the end of this post before 5am. I guess the main thing I feel right now, on the precipice of going back to work next week, is the desire for change. But I'm not sure what type of change. Getting a research job at ?? or ?? would be great on paper, but maybe I'd be too burnt out to really do my best work, or the honeymoon period would be over relatively soon and then the stress would set in. Maybe I need a longer time to "reset" and pursue research at my own pace or even do something completely different like writing.

At the end of the day, life is short and it's scary to think that I'm getting older. Sometimes I'm reminded of this fact when I hangout with A and K, who are still in their mid-20's. Sometimes, I feel like hanging out with them makes me fool myself into thinking I'm still around that age too, but I need to recognize that I'm a different life stage altogether - I want to really optimize for doing interesting things in this next few years and taking advantage of the situation that I've been grateful to be in (through a combination of luck / my own "hard" work, maybe...)

If I'm still doing the same thing a year from now, I'll be really disappointed in myself. I hope I can make 2025 an interesting one - even if things don't work out completely hopefully I'll at least learn something and, at the end of the day, isn't that all life is really about? As A's (from badminton) death reminded me - life is short so we should make the best use of the time we have.

Weeb Movie Night with Friends

Inspired by: On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning

I suppose it's once again time to use my oft-repeated line that it's been a while since I last blogged (even private ones). I wanted to blog at least one a month, but here I am, three months later sitting in my apartment at 3am. There's been a lot going on in life, especially with figuring out my path for the new year. A is most likely leaving at work and, it feels pretty sad to see him go after working together for 8 years. I'm trying to explore some new things as well but only time will tell how they turn out.

But the point of this post was just to record a memory with J, A and K who have become some of my closest friends here. We had what we called a 'weeb' movie night - watching 5cm per second  which is kind of an artistic (film festival vibes) anime film about  guy who's unable to move on from his first love. To be on theme, J brought over a bottle of Attack on Titan sake (Mikasa!) which we managed to polish off eventually.

The film itself was above average - it had great visuals but had a lot of anime-tropes (such as the girl whos obsessed with a guy who doesn't notice her). I really did like the first part though, that I thought captured pretty accurate what it was like to be in "love" for the first time and how intense moments can shape our lives going forward. It's also a cautionary tale though - about how we need to let go of the past in order to move on sometimes. Funnily enough, J, A and K wanted me to watch it to give me some perspective about my situation with S - I guess insinuating that I shouldn't "fumble" things with her and just tell her how I really feel.

I told them though I don't think S was that important - the time apart from her has given me some perspective. Can you really be that into sometime if you essentially forget about them after not talking for a few months? I guess my view is that we'll never feel as strongly about anyone as we did when we were younger - say, 18 or 19. There's just a period in your life when you have really strong and formative interactions and, once that time has passed, you can't get it back. I guess that's also the point of the film and the corresponding short story by Murakami.

I wanted to record this moment with my friends though, because it really was a nice hangout - and representative of our friendship. We got pretty drunk and talked about some deep topics like how our current relationships were probably like 70% - 80% of the most "in love" we'd ever felt. We also just talked in general about if we wanted to have kids and existential fear of what might be facing the world in the future (climate change etc). I also decided to wait outside for an Uber at 3am in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood and felt like I nearly avoided getting mugged...so yeah, there's that. 

Not sure what else is there is to say. I appreciate their friendship, though it's a sappy thing to say so I don't think we'd ever admit it to each other aloud. There's a kind of honesty between us - that we can all readily admit our imperfections and be there to laugh about it with each other without deeply judging. It reminds me of high school friends, but just a tier lower in how close I feel.

Anyway, it's a nice memory and eventually if I move away in the near future, I'm happy to have experienced it.

"You can get what you want or you can just get old" - End of Summer 2024 Updates

[Title stolen from an interesting post an "acquaintance" made recently: https://mindslice.substack.com/p/you-can-get-what-you-want-or-you]

Once again, it's been longer than I would have liked since my previous update but I suppose it's also because life has been busy. As I've said before, out of all the reasons to procrastinate on blogging (aiming for once a month), this is probably one of the better ones since it means I'm out there living life in some sense. Anyway, let's get into it.

Upon reading my previous blog, I think it's only fair to say that the first major update is that I didn't get promo. However, I had almost forgotten about it by the time of writing this and, it's funny to look back and see how important I thought it was just a few months ago. I think A and I had it right at work where we recognized that whether we got it or not would just be a "temporary" spike of happiness/sadness and then we'd move on. The truth is that, it doesn't affect my overall macroscopic situation - I'm still not really doing what I want full-time and whether I have a bigger title or not won't change that. That being said, I can't deny that it would be "nice" to have recognition for the work I've done and to get some more clout but I recognize it's just like a vanity thing so it's probably best to just move on. It is funny though to see how what's important in life can go in and out of fashion so quickly though...

The other major update was going on a family vacation which was...eventful, to say the least. In terms of bags being lost, fights between mom/brother/sister/dad and a lot of hectic travelling, it's definitely something I don't want to do again. I appreciate the effort my brother put into doing it though but I just feel like it's not worth it for the whole family to be together like this or, at the very least, for such a long time (even it was just a week - maybe a weekend would be better next time!).  As I was telling K (Toronto girl who's doing PhD at UCSF), I feel like whenever I'm back home I miss the bay area and whenever I'm in bay area I miss home. Maybe that's a good thing because it shows that I'm happy with my life in both places. Anyway, the point is, lately when I've been at home I don't really feel that happy - it's more stressful to see family drama play out when I want to just spend quality time with mom/dad/sister and/or focus on my own hobbies. I also miss the consistent routine of the gym or even cooking my own food to be honest.

Though one "funny" anecdotal (more like a cautionary tale) is how close I was cutting leaving this time. My flight was at 5am and I literally had to stay up to 3am cleaning (right before my airport pickup was scheduled) because I had A & K (from work) over to play Cuphead and chat. While it was undoubtedly fun, I feel like sometimes I procrastinate and just schedule work/hangouts to fill up the free time I have before a deadline. Anyway, this is probably just a reminder to give myself more buffer time in the future.

Of course, the big elephant in the room is what do I want to do with my life going forward? As I alluded to above, I feel like I'm still not spending the majority of my day in the way that I want. I'm not able to really do research on the topics I'm interested in full-time (such as brain inspired A.I. models) and my day job involves less real "engineering" than ever before. I did make some progress towards this such as formally creating a company with C and starting to do some preliminary work but I feel like progress has been slower than I wanted and life is short. I plan to apply to research jobs again at the end of this year though and hopefully that will give me more clarify on how to make a decision. Though I recognize that sometimes the "idea" of doing research (or being a researcher) is much more appealing than the day-to-day job but I still think it's important to be motivated by what you "identify" yourself as in terms of your day job.

I suppose I also feel unfulfilled because even some of my more "creative" hobbies (mainly writing) have fallen to the wayside. I haven't forgotten about my high school story and the edits I want to do but it feels difficult to find the time - I feel that most of my free intellectual bandwidth has been focused on research/startup stuff and the creative side is kind of being neglected. I guess that's another reason why I felt somewhat bitter about my family vacation - it was one of the few weeks off I had in the entire year and I would have probably liked to have spent it writing or doing research about topics I'm interested in. I know that's somewhat idealistic though, maybe I would have just been playing smash or wasting time in other ways. Also, the time I have to spend with family is finite, given that my parents are getting old soo...maybe I shouldn't judge things too harshly.

The dual elephant in the room is S. Or rather, the lack of things going on with S. I feel like her silence has almost made me want her more (probably a bad trait I have in general), but I'm pretty sure it's just because she's busy and/or doesn't care (not that she's specifically playing hard to get or whatever). I'm not sure how I really feel about it all - I don't want to be clingy but I'd also really like some clarity in this situation. I will say that I thought we had a pretty genuine connection but somehow maybe I'm just falling into the same trap as with other girls I've crushed on in the past (ie. building our connection up more in my head than it was in reality just because we had a few nice moments). It does feel sad when I think about it though, but I've just pushed it to the back of my mind for now. What else can I really do? In some ways, maybe I haven't matured as much as I think but I believe I should give myself credit for not allowing it to dictate my daily emotions that much (compared to previous posts about HG which were cringe in retrospective...)

Anyway, that's probably all the main updates for now. It's 3am as I sit here in my parents living room while my mom snores away. There's a tranquility about the night that I've always enjoyed. 

Be back next month hopefully!