Category Archives: year in review

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Year In Review: 2023

Sun 29 Dec 2024:
I started this post on 12/30/2023, worked on it on New Year’s Day 2024 and again on January 10th, and never got back to it. As 2024 is coming to a close, I thought about completing it properly before starting my 2024 Year In Review, but decided I would post it as I last left it (with a few edits for clarity and privacy). This is more of a reminder for Future Diana about what happened in 2023, anyway, and the Brain Dump section at the end pretty much sums up what I had already forgotten.

It’s not that 2023 was a bad year, per se. Nothing super tragic happened to me or anyone in my immediate family. It’s just that my mental health and my physical health did some perverse do-si-do, my hormonal changes were magnified by work-related stress, and all of these things contributed to a feedback loop that I couldn’t shake.

That said, there were plenty of good times in 2023: Hanging out in Ann Arbor, visiting my Mom in NE Ohio, meeting up with friends here and there, and lots of generally pleasant family time.

Photo of Aaron, Connor, and Diana standing in front of Pinball Pete's in Ann Arbor MI
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In Lieu of a Review: 2022

I never did get around to writing a Year In Review last year.

I still collected all the data, still had things to say… just never managed to sit down and do it. For various reasons.

As I sat down to recap 2023, I felt (as I’d known I would) that I couldn’t summarize 2023 without at least acknowledging 2022. So, in lieu of a review, here are some screenshots from my 2022 roundup on Exist.io, where I aggregate all the things.

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Year In Review: 2020

We’ve all spent the past year living through a global pandemic that’s destined to be at least a footnote in the history books. It’s upended everyone’s sense of normalcy, changed social interactions, wreaked havoc on some sectors of the economy, and cost many their jobs or their lives.

My family has been lucky: our jobs are stable, we’re all healthy, and COVID-19 mainly just means an upheaval to our routines. I’ve been working from home, Connor finished out second grade from home and started third grade with a hybrid of remote and in-person learning, and Aaron spent most of the year working longer hours and adjusting to having us at home during the week.

Even though 2020 was a Very Different Year Indeed, I still kept track of most of the things I usually do, and I certainly couldn’t leave this bizarre year undocumented.

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2019 Year In Review

I’m not sure what it was about 2019 that got me away from writing and photography, but I’m finding that I failed to document a lot of the highlights of the year as they happened. On one hand, I suppose that means I was living life instead of recording it. On the other hand, it means that a lot of notable details got shuffled around under other stuff in my brain.

Mei and Me

So, the year in summary (aka the tl;dr version): I did a lot of sewing. A LOT. My evenings were mostly taken up by sewing and by taking Connor to karate class twice a week. My evenings got even more full once I joined the adult class at the karate school (the teens and adults learn Krav Maga rather than American Freestyle Karate). 

The other major memorable thing about 2019 was my ADHD diagnosis. Getting diagnosed and starting medication was A Big Deal for me, and will likely be something I look back on as a major turning point in my mental health.

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