willsite

2022 Review and 2023 Goals

| Will Bamberg

Following my great transition year of 2021, 2022 was a year of leaning into the kind of person I’d like to become. I feel like I’ve come full circle on taking my identity into my own hands (a process that began ~5 years ago). I embraced creativity as a life priority, and set many goals reflecting that: building out my website, writing essays, and dancing.

What else did I do in 2022? I spent quality time with my girlfriend, family and friends. I thrifted several excellent shirts. I played a lot of pickup and 11v11 soccer. I read 23 books. I traveled to Spain, Italy, South Africa, and Zambia during the summer. I skied and hiked in the front range. I started using Twitter more to think out loud and talk to interesting people. Finally, I attended some amazing concerts (favorites: Glass Animals, Wavedash, Kendrick Lamar, Lorde, Lane 8).

What didn’t go well? I got Covid in February (though luckily with mild symptoms). My morning routine dropped dead when I moved in April. I also got pretty burnt out over the summer from overscheduling myself without enough downtime. Also, my screen habits sharply declined in the second half of the year (despite writing a whole essay on attention in March… oops).

All in all, I’m super grateful for everything the year brought! Progress on my writing and web projects have been incredibly rewarding, and I’m excited to keep going in 2023.

2022 Goals

Build willsite beta - 10/10

A smashing success! I built out and styled my website and blog early in the year. In October, I built a digital garden into the site (a reach goal!), driving from my Obsidian notes. The immediacy of site development has been satisfying and motivating.

Monthly blog posts - 6/10

Blogwriting was a mixed bag. I only published 3 posts in 2022, one of which was my 2021 review. However, I’m proud of the two essays I did write, “So Growing Up With the Internet Ruined Your Attention Span” and “Be On Your Own Team”. The latter, while it took 9 months and 200 hours, is the best and most original thing I’ve written; it’s the kind of writing I aspire to produce. Missing the monthly posting cadence aside, I built a daily blogwriting habit, which is more important to me in the long run anyway.

Daily creativity - 9/10

My goals were to do something creative 90% of days, and dance 80% of days. I hit 92% for creativity and 78% for dance. When I remove “vacation” days (out of town, travel, or visitors), I hit 98% and 92% of days, respectively. I’m super happy with this! My main other creative outlets were blogwriting, writing poetry, coding, doodling, and crafting glass bead strands with my girlfriend.

Morning routine & attention sinking - 3/10

As mentioned, I was doing really well with these at the beginning of 2022. I was meditating and journaling every morning and maintaining decently healthy screen usage, until I moved. That transition totally wiped out all of my momentum, and I never managed to get back on track. I’ve still been journaling, but no meditation (much less adding stretching/yoga/push-ups). Way too much YouTube in the last few months of the year as well. Oh well.

One Offs

  • Summit Longs Peak - 2/10
    • My friend and I bailed due to insufficient fitness and did an alternate overnighter in the mountains. That was the right call, but I do regret the missed opportunity.
  • Mountain bike - 6/10
    • Success, technically, as I mountain biked one (1) time.
  • Ski 10 days - 6/10
    • Partial success with 6 ski days. A bit disappointed but it’s all good. There’s a lesson in there about juggling priorities and weekends and strenuous activity (ski vs soccer game vs hike).
  • Improve living situation - 10/10
    • Great success! Moved closer to Denver, into a house, with cheaper per-person rent than my old apartment. We added another roommate, and the house-family vibes have been lovely. The house has a backyard and a beautiful sunroom, which has become my at-home soccer and dance studio.
  • Making friends - 6/10
    • Soft success. I met more people and deepened some connections, but also didn’t put as much time into making friends as I could have. A bit wistful about it, but I don’t have any regrets—it’s difficult for me to prioritize both working on myself and putting energy into socializing.

2023 Goals

I hope that 2023 will be an acceleration. I’ve grown into my identity and solidified some visions for the future, I just need to keep working hard! I plan to continue building on what I’ve started (creativity, writing, dance, tweeting, blog, digital garden). I hope to renew focus on healthier screen habits and rebuilding my morning routine.

Daily Creativity

  • Continue my daily creativity targets, adding blogwriting officially
    • Creativity: target 95% of days
    • Dancing: target 85% of days
    • Blogwriting: target 85% of days
  • Daily output goal:
    • 1hr blogwriting
    • 0.5hr dance

Projects

  • Share a freestyle dance video every week. (2/52 down! @willbamberg on tiktok!)
  • Willsite development
    • Revamp about page
    • Implement sidenotes into blog
    • Iterate styling (e.g. minimize sidebar for notes/blogposts)
    • [reach] Take a stab at poetry garden and/or digital sketchbook
  • Resume weightlifting (at least 1x a week)
  • Start taking dance classes again (at least 1x a week)

One Offs/Milestones

  • Move in with my girlfriend, ending our LDR
  • Finish learning to shuffle (dance)
  • Summit a 14er
  • Reach 100 email subscribers? (currently 21)
  • Write at least 1 essay per month