Annual Review 2022

It’s annual review season! Here’s a recap of my 2022. As always, this review answers 4 questions:

  • What went well?

  • What didn’t go well?

  • What did I learn?

  • What’s next?

If you’d like to check out my previous reviews, here’s 2021, 2020, and 2019.

What went well?

I had a lot to be thankful for this year.

My personal MBA, courtesy of my work at Cabin. OK, I didn’t actually go back to school to get an MBA. But I did treat the past year I spent at Cabin as a hands-on equivalent of a graduate. At Cabin, I had the unique opportunity of being given as much responsibility as I dared to take on, while working at the cutting edge of technology and human organization.

I took this as a challenge to get an MBA crash course, with a highly personalized "curriculum". Whenever I faced a problem, I would find books, articles, and mentors who could help me find and execute a solution. I wrote memos to myself and to my teammates to document my lessons, opinions, and ideas.

Under my direct care, our content production scaled, we launched and grew the newsletter, and hit 11k on Twitter. Cabin’s brand became known for our content: both for having a thoughtful vision and for being ahead of the curve for how we work with our media contributors. During the 2nd half of the year, I also orchestrated the positioning, launches, and promotions of all our IRL events on our existing content channels this year.

Creativity. I finally grew comfortable enough to call myself a creative. Following The Artist's Way, I kept a near-daily journal and went on multiple dates with my creative self: I enjoyed museums, tried new restaurants, went on walks, and bought myself toys that brought out my inner child, like a Nintendo Switch. I also allowed myself to dream and take steps towards a future I never thought would be mine: that of a professional writer. I took classes in creative writing, investigative journalism, and design.

This year I built in time to have fun. I read novels because they were interesting to me, not because I had a use for them. I went down Wikipedia rabbit holes on the stories behind commercially successful creative projects and the people who put them out into the world. I spent hours in museums, reading plaques, and taking notes. Here are my favourite novels from the year:

Bucket list travel. I did the most traveling I'd ever done this year. I was outside of the country for 3 out of 12 months this year. But even though most of this was work travel, I made sure to make time to check off some bucket list items along the way:

  • Saw Hamilton on Broadway with my parents in June

  • Tried out digital nomading in Lisbon, Portugal

  • Went backcountry camping in Yosemite

  • Went scuba diving for the first time and made progress towards my PADI license

  • Test drove a Tesla

  • Tried a boxing class

  • Played ultimate frisbee in the Philippines

I also summited a 14er — a mountain peak that exceeds 14,000 feet — rented a Mustang convertible, and went on a solo roadtrip in Colorado.

Relationships. While I enjoyed a lot of alone time in 2022, my favourite moments of 2022 were spent with friends and family. I slept over at an old friend's place in Singapore, spent a weekend at a cottage with my family, and even took a few days (and a plane ride!) to watch my friends play world-class ultimate frisbee.

Career. This past year, I had some realizations and made some hard decisions. I realized that I’ve been in marketing for 7 years and I feel that I’ve learned everything I want to know about the field. As a result, I decided to take a (positive!) step back from my marketing career and commit to my creativity — to write and publish more for myself (more on this at the end).

Gym-ing. I started the year off with no gym membership and low interest in working out, aside from my ultimate frisbee games. Going to the gym is an event I look forward to, rather than a necessary evil. Now I have friends to go with, a trainer who plans my workouts, and an internal drive to get stronger.

What didn't go well?

While I’m proud of my wins across the board, there are a number of areas in my life that I feel I could improve on:

Personal writing. Because I'd been so focused on work and producing content for Cabin, I had little time to publish on my own channels and only published 5 essays on my blog this year — an all time low. To put this into perspective, I published thirty eight in 2021, eleven in 2020, and fifteen in 2019. This year, I’m recommitting to writing and publishing for myself (more on this later).

Being organized. Despite my overall productivity, I felt all over the place. I often felt like I wasn't doing enough each day. To-do's oftentimes fell through the cracks. I had to set numerous reminders for myself, to make sure things got done.

Responsiveness. A lot of emails and DMs were left unanswered. I found myself having to declare email bankruptcy — I just archived everything, and only responded to follow ups, apologizing profusely for my lack of responsiveness.

In 2023, the lighter workload will help me catch up with my overflowing to-do list. I’ll also have the space to cultivate my productivity habits. Finally, I’ll actively protect this lack of busy-ness and say no to projects that don’t directly help my writing.

What did I learn?

As part of my efforts to stoke the fire of my creativity and reconnect with my inner kid, I tried several new things this year. Here's what I enjoyed and didn't enjoy:

I like...

  • Writing. A lot. I spent many weekends learning about and writing notes on history and technology. I also spent a lot of time understanding the lives and careers of commercially successful creatives. This is the work I would do, even if no one paid me to do it.

  • Reading biographies. As I write this, I just finished reading Lou Gehrig by William C. Kashatus and I’m halfway through Jordan Mechner’s journals, The Making of Prince of Persia. I prefer reading these over self-help or more declarative books.

  • Researching to pursue my curiosity. Curious what inspired the fiction authors I read, I love going down Wikipedia rabbit holes on the most random topics like the Qing dynasty, the Nordic decorative art of rosemaling, and the origins of the Rick Roll meme. Again, I would spend hours writing essays on these for free.

  • Traveling to spend time with people, or by myself to learn. The most creatively fulfilling times this year came from visiting museums and art galleries by myself. At the same time, some of the most enjoyable moments of my year were when I was traveling with friends and family.

  • All-inclusive resorts. I went to a couple this year. While some people in find them boring, I don’t. I see them as a place where I can read by the beach all day without worrying about my meals.

  • Training to play ultimate frisbee. I find that I enjoy going to the gym, getting stronger, and seeing the results of that work on the field.

  • Leading and managing people. I liked seeing people flourish and produce work that is even better than how I would’ve done it. This year, I realized that I’m pretty good at this, too.

  • Building systems for work. I learned to parallel process doing the work in front of me and thinking about how I could scale. This was a lot of fun to do.

  • Driving nice cars and roadtrips. Thanks to Turo, I got to take a few Audis and a Mustang convertible out for long drives in the Eastern Sierras, the Colorado Rockies, and the Texas Hill Country.

  • Snowboarding. I can barely get on the lifts, but I like the challenge.

  • Design. As part of my creative awakening, this year I took Nate Kadlac’s Approachable Design course. It was exciting seeing how my interests and curiosities inspire what I create.

  • Camping. I went camping for the first time this year and I slept outside of my tent, under the stars. My group and I got lucky: no rain and no bugs.

I don't like...

  • Hiking. I did quite a bit of hiking this year so I can say that I gave it a good solid try ... But it really isn’t my passion. I enjoy walking and I like it if I can go at my own (very slow) pace to enjoy nature.

  • Traveling and working, simultaneously. Travel is too disruptive to do good work. On the other hand, I don't like having deadlines to meet or people to respond to when I want to explore a new place. I enjoy traveling but I don't want to be a digital nomad.

  • Airplanes and airplane food. I just sleep on planes.

  • Bouldering. I enjoyed watching Free Solo and seeing friends at the bouldering gym, but that’s about it.

What's next?

I alluded to a number of upcoming professional changes: stepping back from Cabin and marketing, and pursuing a more creative career.

Why now? Throughout my 7- year career in marketing, I’ve had to figure everything out myself, including most recently, learning product marketing and growth at Cabin. To grow in my career, there are a few distinct paths forward:

  1. Get a product marketing job in an established company with an experienced leader

  2. Learn a different but complementary skill, like design or software development, and change career paths

  3. Use my marketing knowledge to build a business around my own writing and interests

After acknowledging my waning interest in content marketing and in working for other people, option #3 excited me the most. My main focus in 2023 will be to spend most of my time on the projects I enjoyed the most in 2022: writing and growing an audience around my interests.

This said, I'm not leaving the Cabin community. I'm available to Cabin for freelance projects (what we call "bounties"), but I'm stepping away from being a full-time worker. Aside from that, I don't intend to take on any freelance writing, content writing, or content marketing projects this year. I want to give my writing and my ideas the chance to develop and flourish.

And with that, I’ll talk to y’all soon. 👋