Theme, 2023
Added: By ArielLast year, I realized that I wasn't very happy with the course my life was taking. I'd reached the end of easy and regular time-posts for life until the time I retire. My solution was to buy the Theme System journal from Cortex Merch. My aim of this post is to reflect on how that went and my plans for 2023.
2022 Theme: Year of Commitment
My 2022 theme was meant to help me stick to learning skills rather than just dabbling and dropping them. I listed four goals: 1. Read more than I add to "Read Later" 2. Write more for the blog. At least 40 posts in the year 3. Draw more often to gain skill + practice (more beyond chibis) 4. Read german well enough to understand basic news stories or blogs
I can say for certain that 1 and 2 weren't met. I did read more, but not quite as much as I delayed reading. I also only have ~20 blog posts for the year (ignoring the many drafts that went unpublished and tempt me from the sidebar of QOwnNotes).
3 was a success, but only in the final part of the year. I've been drawing fairly consistently since around October. Posting it is still a hassle; I don't use anything like FA or dA or ArtStation and I have to scan each page manually. Still, there's a noticable difference between my initial "benchmark" sketch and my most recent one.
4 was both a failure and a success. I'd ended 2021 with starting Duolingo for German. According to Duome, I earned a total of 7249 experience in it. I don't know if that's good or bad, but I ended up dropping German and replacing it with Japanese at the end of January. I'd say that's a failure if I follow my goals literally. Realistically, that ended up being a great decision because Japanese is infinitely more interesting and more useful for me. There was some transition between Duolingo and Genki 1, and varying levels of focus and effort for each. I dramatically cut back (read as: pretty much stopped entirely) on doing Genki exercises some time in October, but I still complete my Anki decks to this date.
Conclusion
A few hours ago, I felt like shit for not doing anything this year. I still feel bad for not finishing Genki 1 when I was on track to finish it by the end of October at one point. I still don't feel like I read enough.
On the other hand, I did nine chapters of language self-study. I've done enough drawing to see visible improvement. I may not have written a lot for the blog, but I did write almost one post a month. Compared to the Lukas of a few years ago, that's amazing.
I know that my brain will keep gravitating to the potentials and the could-haves and the other signals of "not enough", but I did things this year. I shouldn't lose sight of that.
2023: A Theme and a Resolution?
As much as the word leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, my theme this year is "Discipline". I really don't like the way most "influencers" deal with the concept of discipline. Nonetheless, I need to get my shit together.
Here's my list of ideal outcomes: - Waste less time at work and feel more secure in my job. - Follow along with and finish Proko's Drawing Basics and Figure Drawing Fundamentals. - Pass the JLPT4 - Finish Genki 2 by testing time - Have more time for personal work and play by focusing on one at a time - Go to and get out of bed earlier
The Unfortunate Outliers
There's some additional goals that I'd like to have but can't easily incorporate into the theme. - Lose weight - Build strength - Read more - Avoid AI-generated content
Avoiding AI-Generated Content
This goal will likely be converted into a New Year's resolution regardless of theme choice. Quite frankly, I'm very worried about what it means for the world for AI-generated stuff to become the norm.
I have the typical concerns of misinformation, but what else? As AI trains on AI-generated content (which will start to happen at some point), I expect it will start to converge on certain ideas. I don't think it especially matters what those ideas are - just that those ideas will become more common for no particularly good reason. There's also the discomfort of not actually talking to a human being but to an advanced chat-bot. Imagine having a discussion with and trying to persuade a person who isn't a person at all. Where's the value?