Why Am I Writing This?
It’s that time of year again! I both look forward to and dread this time of year. I enjoy it because I get to reflect on my year as a whole, revisit good memories, lay out my achievements, and express gratitude for all of the blessings in my life.
I don’t enjoy it, however, because it’s such a huge endeavor. That’s why I put it off each year. I think last year I didn’t finish it until the end of March? That’s already 1/4 of the year gone. *facepalm*
As of this writing, it’s almost the end of February. I only put it off this time because I wanted to catch up with my January book notes before getting started on this. (See my most recent book notes: The Autobiography of Malcolm X which is a fantastic read. I highly recommend it!)
And now that I’m caught up, I have no other excuses haha.
2020 Has Been One Heck of a Year
I would be remiss if I didn’t mentioned what an unprecedented year 2020 has been. Not only did we have a global pandemic that claimed a lot of lives, completely tanked the economy, and halted travel around the world, but it was also a time of social unrest. The BLM movement gained momentum in response to police brutality, and racism was stoked by white supremacists supported by arguably the worst president in modern U.S. history, Donald Trump.
This year forced us as people to learn how to cope with adversity and adapt to hardships many of us have never experienced before. Unfortunately, some of us had to also deal with the loss of family, friends, careers, and overall a sense of security.
While I’m grateful that none of my immediate circle of family and friends have gotten sick, I do know people who have lost loved ones. But as we wrap up the 1st quarter of the year with several vaccines being distributed, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. They’re projecting that by May, there will be enough doses for all adults in the country. So hopefully I’ll be able to travel and fly to the Bay Area and visit family.
For me personally, this year has been a year of creative growth, deeper personal connections, and honing in on developing my skills. But I’ll go over these later on in this post.
A Tradition Since 2016
Since 2016, I’ve been doing these yearly reviews mainly for my own records. However, these reflections may also be beneficial to others, so I write them with the intention of a public audience reading them.
For those who don’t know, I do daily, weekly, and monthly versions of this reflection process.
- Daily journal entries – to record my activities and thoughts for each
- Weekly reviews – I examine the highlights of my week as well as track my progress on personal projects
- Monthly retrospectives – focus mostly on big highlights and life lessons I’ve learned that month
This yearly reflection is a culmination of all three of these at a higher level.
Writing this reflection is an arduous process because I have to comb through all my reflections and synthesize them into something like an annual report.
The reason I make this public is to
- Share with my friends and family what I’ve been up to
- Keep myself accountable with my big goals
- Share the life lessons I’ve learned along the way
- Hopefully inspire others to adopt a mindset of gratitude and illustrate the value of continuous self-reflection
Past Years In Review:
This year, I’ve also separated out my 2020 Life Lessons section into a separate post as a sort of addendum to this main post.
Continue reading “A Year in Review: 2020”
