2023 has been kind to me. I’m grateful to the year it has been. My main focus for 2023 was my Health. That was it. I had no other priorities.
Health
In 2012, I was diagnosed with BPPV. I suffered episodes of BPPV since then. Each episode typically lasts for about a week to 12 days (only once it lasted for 16 days). These episodes started off from being once a year. They slowly got worse – the length of the episode and the frequency. By 2021 November, it got so worse that I had BPPV almost every month in 2022. 2022 was one of the most challenging years of my existence. It pushed my limits in terms of most aspects of my life. Looking back at it, I’m just so glad that I didn’t break at any point.
Besides my BPPV, I ended with a few other issues, chronic neck pain, back issues, severe dry eye issue, etc. So, towards the end of December 2022, I decided to fully prioritize Health in 2023. What this meant was that I wanted to be able to do all of what I usually do, while prioritizing health.
I consider my effort to focus on health, a grand success! 🎉
I made a list of all of my health issues and came up with ways to attack them. Every month, I would religiously rate my effort at which I was trying to get these issues under control. I tracked these in my Roam graph. If I wasn’t following a certain path properly, I would figure out the friction points and update the path to avoid those. This really helped me achieve a lot of my goals in 2023.
I wish I could dive deep into what information I tracked to improve my health issues, but I can’t since they’re very specific to my issues.
Sleep
I’ve never given importance to sleep until 2023. In 2022, I noticed that I was barely getting 7 hours of sleep and most nights it was less than 6 hours. It was ridiculously low. So, I decided to force myself to sleep more, on a daily basis. Here’s how the 6 month averages look from the data I tracked every single day.
Improving on sleep changed my life. The way I did it was by using the Sleep/Wake Up feature in the Alarm clock in the watchOS and iOS. Every day, I would set an alarm and made sure the alarm was 8 hours 15 mins out from the time I went to bed. In the beginning, I would force myself to stay in bed and sleep. After 2 months, it got much simpler. I still have trouble some nights, but most nights, it works.
Track your sleep with whichever sleep tracker you have access to (If you don’t invest in one, get one. It’s a game changer f’real) and plan your sleep.
Getting enough sleep actually helped with a lot of my health issues too, which was fantastic. My dry eye completely went away. I went from using Systane eye drops 4/6 times a day to 0. I don’t feel as fatigued all day anymore.
Running Races
In October 2022, I signed up for a 5K race. I was pumped since I thought I was slowly getting better. The day of the race, I woke up at 05:00 AM. I had BPPV that morning and I felt miserable. I was looking forward to being able to run 5K after a long time and it bummed me out.
In 2023, I ran two 5K races. This is a huge milestone for me. I used to casually run 5K earlier, but ever since my health deteriorated, it became hard for me to walk for a while and not feel anxious/dizzy. So, being able to run 5K again was massive. Being able to finish these races helped me a lot with my anxiety.
Anxiety
Ever since my health got fucked, I developed a strong anxiety. I couldn’t do anything without getting anxious. My vestibular therapist helped me a lot with my dizziness and this in turn helped me deal with anxiety better. She changed my life. I’m forever grateful and indebted to her.
Over the past few years, I developed techniques and strategies to stay positive during tough times. It has been a process and I am glad I believed in myself and the process.
Dealing with anxiety takes a lot of mental effort and for those trying, please don’t give up. You’re so much closer to dealing with it than you think. Keep at it. ❤️
Blog
I set a new PR in 2023 in terms of blogging. I wrote 47 blog posts in 2023! That’s an average of 4 posts per month. I have been more regular at it, something I always wanted to do since 2009. I still have 80 more drafts that I need to get to. I don’t think I will be able to finish all of them in 2024, but I intend to get to most of them.
Fitness
In terms of Fitness, I think I did a decent job. Here are some graphs to compare against my previous years.
Travel
I traveled a decent amount in 2023. I visited the following cities –
- Austin, Texas
- Houston, Texas
- Las Vegas, Nevada
- Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico — I finally got a vacation for the first time in such a long time.
With that, I wrap up my yearly blog post. I did make some significant strides in other aspects of my life in 2023. Oh, and I bleached my hair to platinum blonde! 👱 😁 Also, I got to finally attend WWDC after having tried to get in for 13 years.
I cannot stress enough how grateful I am for everything that happened in 2023. I rarely get years like these. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, but it’s time to move on now.
I envision quite a few challenges in 2024. I will give it what I’ve got and see where it takes me. That’s what we all do. We figure things out and do what needs to be done.
I wish all of you a successful, healthy, and happy New Year 2024. Cheers! 🍻
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