Resolve

“I’m good at everything except the things I can’t do.” — Player 212, Squid Game

Resolutions

I wanted to check if I fulfilled my 2024 resolutions but for some reason, I didn’t write any for 2024, 2023, or 2022 on the blog. Anyway, it’s time to look forward.

Making a list

My 2025 New Years Resolutions are as follows:

• Watching less reels and YouTube and Webtoons 😔
• Learn something new and meaningful every day
• 100 pushups, 100 situps, and 100 squats every day
• Healthy sleep schedule

I think this is a solid short list of things I can reasonably accomplish. It’s short so I can always remember and it’s mostly under my control.

It’s also a list that naturally blends into other goals like not being on a screen all the time. To learn something new that’s meaningful, maybe I’ll read a book or an article instead of watching reels.

Checking it twice

Entertainment is just a kind of dopamine shot, and if those shots all come from consuming useless content, it will crowd out space for useful things.

To accomplish my exercise goal, I’ll need to take a break from whatever it is that I’m doing at regular intervals, which would help me stand up more. It would also help reset my mind which does too much thinking.

I haven’t set up any punishment because I hope that these things will become habits and eventually a part of me. There doesn’t need to be an external punishment for not being me.

Project goals

I have some projects I would like to get done this year:

• Fun machine learning application
• Fully produced song
• VSauce-style YT video
• Mobile app available for download
• At least one blog post per month
• Cook for myself a few times

Some of these may need to take place during the summer but I plan to incorporate some of them into my daily routine as well.

Moving On

I saw some sign in the NYC subway that said, “Life can only be understood backwards but it can only be lived forwards.”

This is pretty good advice that I sometimes fail to take. It can be easy to get emotionally attached to the past, but maybe I will be wiser this year.

I plan to spend some more time with friends as well, since that’s really the fun part of life anyway.

Friends’ resolutions

Here are some of my friends’ resolutions for the new year:

• Writing resolutions
• Read good books and eat good
• Spending time with friends
• Drink water
• Look at more birds
• Sleep earlier
• Make music
• Stop being constipated

Appreciation

I think it’s important to appreciate the problems in our lives because without those problems, we would just make different problems for ourselves.

For example, a lot of students stress out about finding internships, but if given the chance to start a job in exchange for taking gap years from college, I think many would hesitate to graduate without their classmates.

Shell Game

My old math teacher Mr. P once mentioned a student who had the power to memorize everyone’s name in the class by only listening once.

This is nice ability to have because on a basic level since people tend to like when you remember their names.

My friend was worried that since they couldn’t mention anything good about their friends off the top of their head, it must mean that they don’t care about their friends, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

It’s probably just that they aren’t sleeping enough or they aren’t too focused on turning how they feel into words. Or, according to the video above, there may not be enough repetitions to actually induce memorization.