Looking back at 2017
I spent most of 2017 being sick and doing what I would describe as writing an operating manual to myself. I kept mis-operating myself, so I kept being sick. I didn’t remember it until today, but for 2017’s new year post I wrote:
In 2017, I just want to have the courage to stop abusing myself, that is all.
It was unlike the posts of previous years which were filled with hopes and dreams. But in recent years, I realised trying to fulfil hopes and dreams while having an unstable self is like a broken vessel trying to carry water. So this year, forced by lengthy periods of sickness, I learned to:
- drink more water
- run
- quit coffee (!!)
- meditate
- become less uncomfortable with emptiness
With the benefit of hindsight I am grudgingly grateful for being sick. It has allowed me to tear apart lifelong unsustainable attitudes and try to reestablish new ones.
There is a lot to work out as a sick person. Am I still worthy of life if I am not being productive? Will people still love me when I have no utility? Will I still be able to be proud of myself? Is life is worth living without doing?
I am in a privileged position to try to recover without much external pressure, and it makes me upset to think about those who are unwell and yet trying to make ends meet. I maintain the belief that we are an unevolved species for not taking care of our sick and weak, but that’s another subject for another day.
In between I still managed to work a little on my experiments, soft-launch a patreon page, contribute an essay which was published in a real book, travel to a few new places:
In all I published 31 pieces of writing on Medium and 23 entries on my public journal. I feel comforted that despite being sick I am able to rely and depend on the consistency of my writing, keeping the habit of publishing at least once a week. This year I wrote posts that my previous self wouldn’t have written because she was too self-conscious and doubting, and one of them these posts turned out to be my most popular post on Medium:
I want to be a person who creates things because they demand to exist, not because of market supply and demand. —18 Aug on Patreon
In a deliberate attempt to develop more courage to express more of myself, I started drawing cartoons to accompany my writing:
2017 was a much more introverted year compared to 2016 as I sought to focus on myself. I also felt more antisocial, and several times I am called to examine my values and connections because of divisive issues like Trump and Damore. Do I want to be friends with people who support Damore? Do I have the courage to voice my views?
Throughout I am grateful to have the company of a few close friends and the person who made me think seriously about how I feel about LGBTQ marriage rights:
I simply want the absolute knowing that she will be recognised as my life partner when something happens to me: whether is it time to pull the plug on a life support machine, or to claim my last remains. I want her to be known as the de facto person who has invested her life into building our partnership, the person who has every right to mourn me, celebrate my life, be offered condolences to. That nobody would be surprised if her name appears in my obituary. I don’t want her to be known as “the best friend” or the “long-term girlfriend” or the words they use when they are describing someone’s gay life partner in newspapers because they cannot use the word “spouse”. — A personal take on gay marriage rights
She and me, we crossed a few huge milestones this year, and I look forward to crossing more of them together.
I read 66 books this year. I had a personal goal to read more science fiction classics. My favourite was The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. Towards the end of the year I started reading a lot on zen, philosophy and psychotherapy to lift me out of my existential crises. If I had to pick one book out of the 66 to recommend it would be The brain changes itself by Norman Doidge. It convinced me to start meditating seriously and regularly. If I wanted to be healthier I would have to rewire the neurological patterns of my brain, which sounded impossible until I read that book. I also loved this book of case studies by psychotherapist Irvin Yalom — it taught me how much healing can be done simply by truly being heard and seen. The words we say to ourselves and other people, matter. They impact the psyche and in turn, changes how our neurons wire.
2017 was an introspective, difficult year. There were moments, despite everything I had and unyielding love from my partner, I still genuinely felt like life was not worth living for. Before her I used to wonder why would people like David Foster Wallace kill themselves despite the evident love they had from their people?
2017 taught me that one can be loved immensely and possess everything they could possibly want, and yet be unable to find the capacity to truly, compassionately, love themselves.
I am one of them, and I am a work-in-progress. I think 2015 taught me that I didn’t like who I became, 2016 was a year I tried to change but fell back to old patterns, 2017 was a year I truly tried to let go of who I was.
I think I am starting to see a blueprint of who I want myself to be, and if I am lucky, I will be able to build upon it in the years to come.
I hope time will be kind to me.
Related: Previous year-in-reviews
