I can barely even remember who I was at the beginning of the year.
Things I did this year:
- Became the manager of a team of 3 at work (Jan)
- Purchased four cameras: half-frame film, instax, Insta360, GoPro (Jan)
- Announced the Justice 2023 (Mar 3-5)
- Directed and produced media week at the Justice (Mar 8-11)
- Released a cinematic team introduction produced, directed, and DP’ed by me (Mar 30)
- Saw NCT Dream (7드림) in Newark (Apr 5)
- Started exercising 운동 1일차 (Apr 15)
- 3rd wedding as a cellist, 1st wedding as a guest (May 21, 27)
- New glasses (Jun 19)
- Last day at the Washington Justice (Jun 30)
- Went to the beach (Jul 14-15)
- [Redacted] 5K (Sep 2)
- Finished cleaning my room (Nov 15)
- Went to the Nutcracker with Pinky (Nov 25)
- Invested time playing cello for worship at church throughout the year
- Followed LCK closely for the first time
- Attended singing class in summer + fall
People:
- Mama, Dada, Rin
- AW, NL, MC
- DC, BF, ㅂㅈㅇ
- The Justice folks
- CS, AC, SB, JK
I’m sorry to myself in last year’s post who thought I had recovered from college burnout and made it to “normal life.” I proceeded to lose my time, soul, and any parts of my life that were not work, and due to circumstances, was pretty much dead by March. The new players and creative control revived me for another month or two, and then I realized there was no more room for growth, and I was very lifeless. I decided to leave, the stress compounded, and a jaw lock situation later, I left the Justice after 14 months at the end of June.
Now that I’m in a strange situation of realizing my dream is no longer my dream anymore, I’m finding it difficult to really brag about everything and feel proud of what I’ve accomplished if it’s not where I’m going anymore. I’ll just leave it at these two things: one, out of the goals list I wrote last year, I didn’t accomplish any of them except for the one where I was able to PD multiple shoots in Korean. My Korean is still no good and it’s quite awkward, but it is at least that functional. And secondly, this video. (And a bonus clip I guess I want to save.)
And now I’m having an existential crisis (not in a dramatic way). After 6 months I think I’m finally recovered from the burnout, but I’m distressed trying to figure out what direction I go now. I know I need a non-grind job but all of my talents and strengths lead to grind-based careers. It’s also fascinatingly terrifying to have to define your identity without going to school or work.
This year I continued to watch all of my CBS reality (2x Survivor, 1x BB, 1x TAR), this time with more people joining me for it. I watched Big Brother with my mom and I don’t think we missed an episode and that got very tiring by the end; it wasn’t very enjoyable. However, Survivor 45 was easily the best Survivor I’ve seen in such a long time; that TV program continues to inspire me. And TAR was probably the best one in the last 5 or so as well. Whereas TAR was so much more interesting to me than Survivor 10 years ago, I’m finally ready to change my #1 from TAR to Survivor based on new seasons.
Following LCK for the first time this year was so precious to me. In the first half of the year, it was my escape from OWL, and after I unplugged from OWL, it became everything I leaned on in the second half of the year. I’m so proud of Keria for becoming Spring MVP and this Worlds really combined with last year’s to create a complete set fairytale. Congratulations on the gold medal as well, I hope that means I can cheer for him for a long, long time.
Last year I made a graphic called “Seeing you smile makes me smile,” and I think there’s no better way to describe how I feel towards the k-pop idols and esports players that I’m a fan of. Here is my favorites list updated for 2023 (only a few changes from last year in the OW players):
- Seventeen (S.Coups, Jeonghan, Joshua, Jun, Hoshi, Wonwoo, Woozi, The8, Mingyu, DK, Seungkwan, Vernon, Dino)
- Renjun
- Chenle
- Keria
- Deft
- Kingen
- Onew
- Key
- Teru
- MirroR
- Mer1t
- Vigilante
Two of them were on the bench all year, which made it very hard to stay connected, and many of the rest had middling performances this year. Nevertheless these are the players and idols who have my heart, and excel in character and skill, and inspire me every day.
In addition to this list of favorites, here are a lot of other people I am a very big fan of (but couldn’t fit on to the favorites list):
- NCT Dream (Jisung, Jaemin, Jeno, Mark, Haechan)
- other Justice players (FDGod, AlphaYi, Flora, Opener, Happy, Kalios, Krillin)
- T1 (Gumayusi, Faker, Oner, Zeus)
- Morgan
- Willer
- Pyosik
- Peanut
- Canna
- Showmaker
- Doran
- Chovy
- Rascal
- Zeka
- Peter
- Pelican
- Danteh
- Choisehwan
- Profit
- Someone
- Amazing Saturday (한해, 넉살, 문세윤, 신동엽, 김동현, 박나래, 태연, 붐, 햇님, 피오)
- Even of Day (Dowoon, Young K, Wonpil)
- &Team (Nicholas, EJ, Taki, Yuma)
- ITZY (Ryujin, Yeji, Lia, Yuna, Chaeryeong)
- NMIXX (Kyujin, Lily, Haewon)
- Smoothie
This year I watched a lot of T1 stream highlights and DK stream highlights. I also continued to enjoy odg, and watched more Psick. Recently I’ve been watching some Keane and Jorbs.
I also spent a ton of time in streams trying to get to know my favorite players better. It was so hard to decide who to watch and who not to; it’s a lot of time and attention too. I think I spent the most time with Keria, Deft, MirroR, and AlphaYi, and I’d also watch Kingen and Morgan. I tried to catch SVT vods here and there but I am far less thorough with following their every step as compared to 2-3 years ago. Of course, I still saw every GoSe the day it came out. But I didn’t stay updated on every concert, etc.
One update is that due to somebody mentioned above declaring they were going to start working out, I got competitive and attempted a 20 weeks/6 days challenge to start becoming Kingen(?). I don’t know that I really made progress toward my goal of larger stature but I think I’m at least not puny now. I also recorded everything since I started in April, so I get to make a cool calendar of all my exercise this year.
After struggling with TFT and other things for an entire week in August, I lost on week 18 and no longer had the problem of having to figure out what prize I was going to award myself. Now that I made this calendar, I am seeing that I have been far less diligent than I thought I’d been since then, so maybe I’ll shape that up going into next year. The combination of less routine, uneven sleep, monthly depression, and other mental battles makes it so difficult to stay consistent.
I spent my entire year in music on Spotify, which made referring to Spotify Wrapped for insights more reliable. It turns out I haven’t changed at all (because I don’t change my playlists and listen to the same things ad infinitum): Seventeen, NCT Dream, SHINee, Even of Day, and Ariana Grande.
Music from this year:
- Ditto
- 파이팅 해야지, Lunch
- Circle (+ full album)
- Love Me Like This, Young Dumb Stupid (+ full album)
- 잠깐 시간 될까
- S-Class
- 손오공, Fire, Dust, FML (+ full album)
- 울끈불끈 사랑, 상남자가 아닌 너가 참 좋아
- Hard (+ full album)
- Roller Coaster
- 잘 지내길 바래
- 3, 2, 1
- ISTJ (+ full album)
- ETA (+ full album)
- Ima (+ Sara Sara)
- 후라이의 꿈
- Good & Great (+ full album)
- Gods
- So Special, FYP
- 음악의 신, Monster, Diamond Days (+ full album)
- Dropkick (+ full album)
My Seventeen release tierlist this year goes: 음악의 신, 손오공, Dust, Fire, Monster, and FML, then Diamond Days and Ima. I’m starting to lose track of things the way they’ve done April-ish and October-ish comebacks for like the 4th year in a row. My top 3 solo projects this year were Hoshi’s 아픈 길, Wait, and Psycho (much better than Limbo (but not to be confused with being better than Silent Boarding Gate/Crow)). Honorable mention to Stay and Me (too recent to judge yet).
In the midst of the torrents of new groups over the last couple of years, &Team and NMIXX stand out to me as uniquely talented and passionate. I’m also curious about the new Pledis group and I wonder if they will be any good. After April 19 this year, I’m so touched by Seventeen’s attitude towards the rest of the industry and their genuine care and love for their fellow artists. They really are rising into the top spot now that BTS had less group activities, and I couldn’t have dreamed of this when I first became a Carat just 3.5 years ago. I just hope that they continue to stay healthy themselves and safely finish their military service as well.
In video games, I played TFT as usual, but I rested throughout all of set 9.5 after hitting a wall trying to reach Diamond in set 9. I feel like I need to re-learn and drill a lot of basics in this game despite playing since set 1, and accept the fact that I’m probably not as good as I think I am. I wanted to set a goal to break my D3 record, but now that they’ve put Emerald in the middle I’m not sure whether I can make it happen.
I also re-played Slime Rancher, enjoyed the new Rusty Lake releases, played plenty but less Overwatch 2, 100%’ed It Takes Two, Cursed Treasure 2, and the Bart Bonte Collection, finished Bread & Fred and did a lot of PlateUp!, and started a re-play of Super Mario Odyssey. I started Slay The Spire recently and have so far invested 114 hours into the Ironclad and 0 into any of the other characters (I’m currently trying to complete A19).
At the end of the year, I’ve been wrestling with how long it is taking me to clean all my possessions (satisfied with the result although dissatisfied with the speed), as well as working on various translation subbing projects (glad to meet j!). I haven’t made a dent in those videos that have been bugging me for over a year now, and my project goals have largely unchanged from last year, so just check last year’s goals list I guess (at least the good thing is that I still want the same things even if I didn’t work on them at all). I also spent plenty of time watching Worlds, making some YouTube videos (sidenote: after resigning I started watching short-form and now I make good short-form. hmm), and re-reading some books. This is me returning to semblance of “normal life.”
I’m hitting that part of my life that I warned myself about last year where I need to put in effort to make and keep friends. I’m lucky to have had three good IRL friends that I spent lots of time with this year, but two of them have moved away and now the last one will be moving next year. So I’ll be lost in the sauce if I don’t figure something out. I’m glad to have one good online friend and also Pinky who I took on dates a lot, but it’s not the same as friends who live nearby.
knittingfrenzy18 