I’m glad I got to get out of the house for the first quarter of the year more than I used to do. But this blog is about what I did for the rest of the year during the lockdown.
TV Shows
Everyone’s first instinct when thinking of what to do in a lockdown was probably to binge some shows. I started with K-Dramas—Crashing Landing on You, Itaewon Class, and What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim. My favorite though is Reply 1988. Its ending is as justified as How I Met Your Mother’s.
And, I can now finally understand The Office References after finishing the whole series in a month. I also started Parks and Rec but haven’t continued it yet after getting distracted by Reply 1988.
Gaming
Kix has been recommending Stardew Valley to me for some time, and I found the great opportunity to start in March. I got reminded about it because it got mentioned by my colleagues at work. Unsurprisingly, I easily got obsessed with the game. I played it a lot until I got tired of it.
I was playing Stardew Valley while everyone else was playing Animal Crossing. I wanted to play ACNH badly too. But the lockdown made Switch a scarce resource for a while. When I finally got one, everybody already had moved on from the game. I played it for weeks then forgot about my Switch. I only picked it up now during the holidays, and I’m really enjoying some games I bought on sale from eShop.
Fitness
When I was thinking of starting to workout back in May, I thought it would be too late—that the-pandemic-will-be-over-soon kind of late. I’m glad I decided to go with it.
I owe my workout consistency to two things—Ensayo yoga mat and the Down Dog app. Thanks to the podsibs who introduced them. The Down Dog app had a free trial, so I gave it a go. I already tried an actual yoga class last year at Gold’s Gym, so I had an idea of what to expect. I liked the app so much I bought a subscription before the free trial ended.
I tried doing yoga every day, even just the sitting one. Eventually, my body yearned for more so I also tried the other apps of Down Dog—HIIT and Barre. I also added resistance bands workout and jump rope in my workout routine. I also got to try pilates with a virtual coach—who is also a podsib, by the way—from Onelife Studio. My goal next year is to master crow pose and yoga inversions.
Reading
I finished a book! I read Atomic Habits by James Clear, which was highly referenced by Rowena Tsai on Youtube. He said, if you want to keep a habit, you should make it easy. For example, if you only enjoy reading books of a certain genre, you should stick with those. Therefore, I’ll be reading more non-fiction books in 2021.
Because of the podsibs book club, I also set up a Goodreads account which encourages me to read more.
Community
I keep mentioning the term podsibs. It’s what we call each other in the Wake Up With Jim and Saab community. I learned to use Discord this year when we decided to migrate our group chat from Telegram. This decision has been life-changing, to say the least. I wouldn’t have been inspired to do the things above without the help of these people. The community helped me revive my old interests, especially music. I like discovering songs from them and it makes me happy when they like songs I recommend. I keep a music journal now where I log songs that move me.
The highlight for the past six months with them would be our open mic nights. It is a virtual event that we started organizing on a whim. The adrenaline I felt during those nights takes me back to my college org days.
This year, I also…
• started a podcast with Kix
• got my piano tuned, finally, and am back to practicing
• wrote in this blog more
• sang in public, virtually of course
• started learning Nihongo formally
• explored digital art
• cared more about productivity
• made new friends
Anyway, here’s my 2020 year-ender video!