A decade of recaps
2016 was the year I fell off the habit of efficient life recording.
I n years past, I often capped the year-long blogging season with a recap of sorts. Delving through three old blogs, I found that I have been in the habit of looking back on my year since 2006, which means, to date, I have accumulated a decade’s worth of recaps. These recaps usually consist of a month-by-month listing of things I found blog-worthy: Movies, books, TV series, food, Internet longreads, etc.
Recaps 2006–2015
- Here’s the 2006 version: http://www.thegshift.com/blog/?p=38. Hosted in my first domain, this was a link round-up featuring an old blogspot (since padlocked, for entirely good reasons, so apologies for the blocked links.)
- The year 2007 was a good writing year. Here’s that year’s round-up: http://www.thegshift.com/blog/?p=142. It features a handful of fiction and personal essays which, to this day, I still re-read from time to time.
- On the other hand, 2008 was an adjustment year of sorts. That year’s yearender, hosted in another blogspot, was short and sweet: http://thegshift2.blogspot.com/2008/12/yearender.html
- I liked my 2009 yearender because it was a bit playful: http://thegshift2.blogspot.com/2009/12/twenty-oh-nine-you-were-mine.html
- In many ways, the 2010 yearender was about growing up. http://thegshift2.blogspot.com/2010/12/2010-round-up.html
- I like the 2011 yearender because I traveled a lot that year: http://thegshift2.blogspot.com/2011/12/2011-yearender.html (Interesting to note that bulk of the contents of that blog’s beach tag were written that year.)
- In 2012, I moved to a new domain, and I was so into the whole ‘doing a yearender thing’ that it had its own tag: http://lastgirl.net/the/?tag=yearender-2012
- In 2013, the yearender had its own tag, too: http://lastgirl.net/the/?tag=yearender-2013
- In 2014, too: http://lastgirl.net/the/?tag=yearender-2014
- Things started flagging in 2015, as can be gleaned from the 2015 yearender: http://lastgirl.net/the/?p=2937
Last year — 2016 — was the first year since 2006 that I failed to make any yearender of sorts. Perhaps this was because I wanted to forget bulk of 2016, a true annus horribilis, whose decline has been evident since the first quarter, and which spared no one (and no country) until the very end.
However, it did have its fine moments: Our team won our first journalism award from the Catholic Mass Media Awards, and I was in Singapore for the first time for the Formula One race.
This year has also been a year of change. The Inquirer changed its look; a cousin got married. The country ushered in a new president in May. I quit my job last December after 11 years of working in the paper.
Truth be told, I haven’t turned over a completely new leaf in more than a decade. Doing so right now — at this age — feels strangely exhilarating and, of course, downright terrifying. Like most people, change makes me anxious, and my anxiety often leads me to doubt myself:
What was I thinking? Who did I think I was, doing something like this? Do I have what it takes to pull this off? Can I really do this?
Fortunately, my inner demons have always been matched by an army of outside angels — friends and family who have constantly tried to encourage me to challenge myself with every passing year. But even with them around, the struggle to overcome has been constant.
Last year, I let my inner demons run the party, for the most part. This year, that is about to change. If there’s one thing that I hope will make it to the 2017 recap, I hope it will be that.
