I reflected on the year using Pat Kua’s End of Year Retrospective Template. I won’t share all my results here, just a bit of a roundup below, but the questions from that document I really appreciated were:

• What brought you joy this year?
• What made you sad this year?
• What are you grateful for this year?

These three questions sure help in building out goals for next year. If you are looking for a handy framework for reflection, I think Pat’s is a great place to start.

The Last Year

2020 was an extreme year for all. We moved to Japan during a pandemic and my wife lost her mother. My kids endured Japanese elementary school and we evacuated during a typhoon. There was lots to overcome (some of it still going on!). I am certainly grateful for the financial stability to do so. This foundation, and a stable family life, allows me to pursue my joy of reading, writing, and engaging with ideas. Looking at the numbers below you can see how much I put out into the world this year, a marked increase on years past. 2019 was a year of figuring what I wanted to do with my life, and 2020 was actually going out and doing it.

Being outside the rat race of corporate life also gave me more room to engage with art. I spent time assessing how writers put together words, rather than just examining their arguments (cue Bruce Lee’s “don’t think, feel!”). I discovered André Alexis and still think about This Is How You Lose the Time War. Books, film, music, performance, ceramics… even sunrises and sunsets, puffy clouds crossing the sky. Maybe recognizing beauty everywhere is a feature of getting older? This year I definitely spent more time appreciating skills and craft. Thinking about the day in and day out of a writer’s craft is probably what made reading How to Take Smart Notes was so radical for me.

Without setting out to do so, I gravitated towards stories about amazing people. I finally read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and watched Ghandi. I gave my daughter a copy of Greta’s book and read more on the Dalai Lama. Even fictional geniuses found their way into my media diet: The Queen’s Gambit inspired a Christmas chessboard (I was about their age when I got my first chessboard, I told myself).

In 2020, since leaving my job, I spent a lot more time with my kids watching them grow and trying to figure out their passions. We are all trying to find out own way. 2020 to me was one of searching and growth a amongst a seemingly chaotic and changing world.

The Last Decade

Ten years is a long time. I entered the decade a very different person than when I came out (who hasn’t?). I moved to Canada with Apple in 2010, and spent the next ten years working with startups and tech companies. I had a second child and built up a wonderful new network of friends and community in Kelowna.

Reflecting on this period one the thing I am happy about is all the self-reflection I did during that time. I grew a lot as a human, shifting my thinking on a lot of topics, and even took action by making changes to how I live my life (eg. downsizing, vegetarianism, anti-racism, technology ethics). At the same time, looking back I feel it was sort of a decade of loss. My Japanese language suffered and my knowledge of Japanese politics and history grew stale. That feeling might be due to recency bias. Since moving back to Japan in March I feel so left behind by all my friends who stayed here. No need to compare, I know, but I cannot help thinking I could have kept up a bit better. Now, well into middle age, I have a better sense of myself and what I find truly important. I will take this feeling into the next decade.

For now, goodbye 2020, goodbye 2010s. And goodbye to all you readers! I will see you bright and early next year. May you be happy, healthy, safe, and free-from suffering.

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Previous Best Of’s and roundups

• The best of 2019
• A quick end of year roundup (2018)
• Best of 2016
• The best of 2015
• The best of 2014
• The best of 2013
• My year in film and books (2012)
• My year in books (2011)