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My 2017 Annual Review

Table of Contents

My favorite part of ending any year is the annual review. My annual reviews put me in a better position whenever I start a new year. Plus, looking back at the memories I created in the past year is an emotionally fulfilling practice.

For my annual review of 2017, I will be following James Clear’s simple format. I will be answering three questions:

  1. What went well this year?
  2. What didn’t go so well this year?
  3. What am I working towards?

For a twist, I will be applying each of these questions to the three main areas of my life:

  1. Self-care
  2. Personal transition (to a lifestyle that is less dependent on the market economy and less destructive of the environment)
  3. My mission

1. What went well this year? #

Self-care #

  • I have maintained my mindfulness practices to a point where I do meditation and yoga every day as long as I am not traveling.
  • I was able to rekindle a few relationships that I thought were already dead.
  • Entering 2017, I made it my intention to fill my life with community. I think I made a good job fulfilling this intention. This year, I made a lot of friends and I was able to connect with several communities: Ginhawa, FLOW, and HEAL.

Personal transition #

  • I have deepened my understanding and appreciation of economics.
  • I have started volunteering on a farm where I help in growing vegetables in exchange for food and accommodation.
  • I have also begun to grow my own vegetables at home. My goal is to be food sufficient and resilient in the near future.

My mission #

  • This year, I created and launched this new website to house a mission that has become clearer.
  • I also launched a collaborative ebook this year – Tanaw: Eleven Filipino Perspectives On A More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible.
  • I returned to freelancing towards the end of the year. This gave me more time to focus on my mission.

2. What didn’t go so well this year? #

Self-care #

  • I am still on medication throughout this year and I haven’t started tapering.
  • I can do a better job of improving my sleep.
  • I still am not eating as healthily as I want to.
  • I have been moving less compared to previous years.

Personal transition #

  • It wasn’t until the middle of the year when I realized that what I really wanted to do was to “transition” towards a lifestyle that was easier on the Earth and less dependent on money.
  • My goal entering 2017 was to build a large capital to invest so that I could retire early probably within a five-year period. So early this year, I took on a full-time job which earned me a good sum of money. However, I, later on, realized I didn’t really want to be an investor. What I really wanted to do is to master my relationship with the material world through voluntary simplicity and resilience. Like most of my previous years, navigating my relationship with the material world this year was made up of many trials and errors. While I find most of them necessary, I could have made better decisions that would have lessened the difficulties I faced this year.

My mission #

  • While I have launched a website and an ebook, I wasn’t really able to write a lot. I could have created more if I wasn’t too focused on my personal transition. Now, that I am back to freelancing, I expect that I will be able to study, write, and create more things that I hope people will find helpful.

3. What am I working towards? #

Self-care #

  • To be honest, this is an area I haven’t completely made up my mind with. What will I be focusing on this 2018 with regards to taking care of myself? Definitely, I intend to continue my mindfulness practices, sleep better, eat better, and move more.
  • I will also be researching the science behind medication tapering so that I could finally come off my medication.

Personal transition #

  • I intend to continue pursuing two goals this year: (1) lessen my dependence on money and the market economy and (2) lessen my ecological impact.
  • To lessen my dependence on money, I intend to continue volunteering at the HEAL farm and on other farms around the Philippines. Volunteering on these farms is part of my desire to learn how I can achieve food sufficiency and resilience.
  • I will also be nurturing my relationships with people so that I could rely more on community rather than money.
  • This year, I will be experimenting with a few personal economic practices like income topping, gifting, and non-accumulation. I will be writing more about these practices and my plans for instituting them in my monthly routine in a future article.
  • I also intend to lessen my ecological impact by traveling less, especially by plane, and by changing several habits that I have, which contribute to the destruction of Gaia.

My mission #

  • After encountering Steve Patterson’s work, I intend to focus on studying logic and philosophy. I’m thinking about using whatever I learn to check the foundations of the beliefs and concepts that I held on after leaving my childhood religion in 2012. I know that this intention will lead me to different places so I’m not setting a lot of expectations and goals on my mission this year. I’ll just begin and see where it brings me.
  • While I’ll be focusing on personal study, I do intend to write more this year and populate this website with articles and other instructive content. It will be part of my learning journey this 2018.

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