End of Year Reflections (pt. 1)
Obsidian's founder Steph Ango helps me explore the nooks and crannies of life over the past year and into 2025.
The Teardown
Tuesday :: December 10th, 2024 :: Approx. 3 min read
👋 Hi, this is Chris with another issue of The Teardown. In every issue, I cover how we interact with technology that powers our day-to-day lives.
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Early this year, I wrote about my 2024 ideas. Some readers thought they were resolutions. But, those people were tragically mistaken. I would not, of course, do something so silly like make and break commitments, right?
That idea piece was a vehicle for documenting frothy stimulating topics warming my brain.
We're approaching 2025, aren't we. And I’m reflecting on what I’ve accomplished and what I want to do. I'm ruminating on too many ideas as usual.
Some of you will make and definitely break resolutions. The #dryjanuary hashtag will fill the feeds of every social platform, illuminating breakers or makers of habits for 2025.
My 2025 ideas aren’t set in stone other than these:
Focus on how you want to spend your days.
Focus on who you want to spend your days with.
Simple. Provocative. Impactful. So, you might want to know my answers.
But, I recently found a post by Steph Ango, creator of the popular note and second-brain software platform Obsidian. He described how he explored his interests, motivations, and reflected on recent time in a 2022 post:
Every year I ask myself 40 questions that help me make sense of what happened over the past twelve months. I love working through that exercise and discussing it with friends and family who do it too.
As we enter a new decade, I’ve been pondering what the 2020s will hold for us. I remembered that some time ago I had answered Proust’s famous questionnaire, and thought I would try answering it again. While the yearly questions help me reflect the memorable events, Proust’s questions are more about personal philosophy and traits that change less frequently over time.
I encourage you to answer the questions from Steph’s post. I will too, and may graduate some of those explorations as posts here. What stands out to you? Comment on it.
There’s another question that I contemplate all the time:
How do you feel about your relationship with technology in your life?
It’s at the top of my stack of questions - question #41.
I brainstormed a few different versions of that question:
What is your relationship with technology in your life?
How do you use technology in your life?
Etc.
Exploring the feeling instead of the mechanistic use seems more rewarding. There’s so much news and analysis about the good and bad that technology causes. But describing innermost thoughts of any kind is, well, uncomfortable.
The details might be happy, sad, creepy, icky, dangerous, and etc. I suspect lots of people (you) feel many (or all) of them. I know I do.
I’ve now sat in front of these questions 3 separate times without completing all 40. Lots of memories and ideas and aspirations flood my brain when I start thinking about the questions.