What progress did I make in 2022?

Work
The year began with a flurry of activity for me, as I had a paper submission deadline looming at the end of January. Despite my initial doubts about the novelty of my results, the paper was accepted and I attended my first conference. It was a valuable experience, and I have since reflected on my thoughts and plan to publish them soon.

After submitting the paper, I embarked on a new project with a different team. Unfortunately, the project was a failure and I take the majority of the blame upon myself for my lack of commitment and laziness. I also attribute a small portion of the blame to my team for having me work remotely despite having available office space and I repeatedly asked. The project lasted for two months and then I returned to my regular classes, which were mostly interesting but not overly challenging. One class included the implementation of a reinforcement learning algorithm on a humanoid robot, which provided me with the opportunity to work with the Robot Operating System (ROS). Following my exams, I began a two-month project for a non-profit organization, which did not go as well as planned mainly due to my teammates’ chronic absence from meetings. However, I did gain experience working with Docker. In the fall, I began my master’s thesis, which sparked an interest in exploring clean coding techniques and the importance of writing reusable code.

As each year passes, I can’t help but feel as though I haven’t accomplished enough. This year is no exception, as I feel that my progress is lacking, especially given that I am at an age when humans are said to be at their mental peak. Despite this, I did have a paper accepted for publication, which was an unexpected accomplishment.

Fitness
This year was a great one for my personal fitness. I started to go to the gym at the end of March and mostly managed to stick to a schedule for the rest of the year. For the first couple of months, I went three times a week but switched to two times after starting an additional fitness class where I do 45 minutes of running and 45 minutes of bodyweight exercises once a week. My gym routine is structured around low-rep compound exercises. On Tuesdays, I do 3 sets of 5-8 repetitions of squats, overhead press, lat pulldown, and bench press (incline or flat), on Saturdays I do the same exercises, but add triceps extensions, biceps curls, and the deadlift (I skip this one every time I am not feeling 100% because I am worried about getting injured). Although I haven’t seen significant progress in terms of increasing weight on the bar, probably due to neither eating nor training enough, I have noticed improvements in my mood and physique. I feel more energetic and less tired throughout the day, and my weight has remained stable (BMI between 21 and 22) while losing body fat and gaining muscle.I did experience some overuse injuries in my arms but incorporating a warm-up routine helped to alleviate them. I also enjoyed bouldering this year, but due to the risk of injury, I won’t be doing it frequently in the future.”

Nutrition
After joining the gym, I made changes to my diet to increase my protein intake, cutting out pasta and bread almost entirely. I typically fasted in the morning and ate two large meals a day. On gym days, I usually had a protein shake and on non-gym days a piece of fruit in between the meals. My nutrition plan has been inspired by the lean gains program, which advocates eating a calorie surplus when you train and a calorie deficit when you don’t. On gym days, I normally eat burritos filled with various beans, tomatoes, cream cheese, and peanuts. Otherwise, I’ll have oatmeal with milk and low-fat yogurt or boiled potatoes with yogurt and chili oil. I was able to stick to this plan quite consistently until I started my on-site master’s thesis. The whole team usually goes to a nearby cafeteria to have lunch, which mainly consists of enormous amounts of carbohydrates, usually in the form of potatoes. I still eat clean at home, but overall my diet is much worse than before. My constant struggle against snacking has been quite successful this year and I have only shown weakness a couple of times. I have been fully vegetarian the whole year and plan to stick to it.

Skincare
During the aforementioned conference, I went downtown with some colleagues and we ended up in a rustic, but cozy pub. I can’t remember what led to this topic of conversation, but we started talking about our respective skin care routines. All the other guys were a couple of years my senior and had elaborate plans how to apply various oils and creams each morning. Given that, until then, my “routine” consisted of putting water on my face, I thought that maybe they were on to something and I lost myself in various skincare online forums for a couple of days. My overall impression was the main culprit involved in skin ageing is the sun, which can luckily be fought by using a cream with sun blocking. Now, my routine consists of washing my face in the morning with a mild face wash and then applying a moisturizer with a SPF of 30. Since I started, I have noticed that I have a clearer skin and less acne. My skin used to be quite oily, however, now, when I forget the moisturizer, it is super dry.

Reading
I started this year thinking about Ethics in general and Utilitarianism in particular, which remained my literary focus for the rest of the year. At the beginning, I read mostly texts by Singer, until I negligently decided to pick a copy of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons. It is a monumental volume and has greatly influenced how I think about ethics. While I didn’t ascribe to any normative ethical theory before, I now lean strongly towards consequentialism.
Unfortunately, my smartphone broke beyond repair this year and the list of what I had read vanished into the ether, so here is a probably incomplete list of what I read this year:
– Utilitarianism – Katarzyna De Lazari-Radek & Peter Singer
– Drop Dead Healthy – A. J. Jacobs
– Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
– Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction – Patrick Gardiner
– Wild Animal Ethics – Kyle Johannsen
– Zero to One – Peter Thiel
– Eiger Dreams – John Krakauer
– The Hungry Brain – Stephan Guyenet
– Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman! – Richard Feynman

Writing
I published 14 posts this year, compared to 13 the year before. Here is a list of all of them:

One thing I noticed is how much the quality of my writing varies with the time of day and my mental fatigue. My writing is at its clearest when I wake up on Saturday at 7 and immediately sit down at my desk and start writing. Correspondingly, when writing in the evening after a long day of cognitively demanding work, my essays look as graceful as a manatee on ice skates. The issue is that mornings are also when I can code most productively and it seems wasteful to spend this time writing this subpar blog instead.

Until now, I have not told a lot of people about the existence of Nemology. I want to change this but have not done so yet. Possible negative consequences don’t worry because I neither write nor intend to write about spicy subjects. Instead, my pride is the main thing holding me back, as I do write about my petty insecurities and struggles with life and I feel uneasy about letting other people take a look into my brain like that. However, I do want to be more open about my ideas and eccentricities and sharing this blog seems like an excellent way to do so.

New stuff I tried out
Last year, I learned what “RPG” means. This year, I played my first game of Dungeons and Dragons. The rules are not easy, but after preparing for only 259475 hours I was able to run a session of “Lost Mine of Phandelver” for my family. In January I also played a couple of hours of “The One Ring” online, which was quite fun until the Loremaster stopped showing up.
In the summer, I became involved in my local effective altruism chapter and am now going regularly to meetings. I have also started helping out with some small organizational tasks and promoted the chapter at a campus event. I’ve met many amazing people through this group and becasue everyone seems to be doing more interesting things than me, it motivates me to become more involved and to be a better person.” One thing I noticed this year is how much my voice and social suaveness changes with usage. In the last years, I often noticed that I had trouble speaking loudly and knowing what to say in social situations. In the late summer and fall, I spent quite a lot of time going out and being in loud places and my voice gradually adapted and became stronger. My social autopilot also improved from occasional parking assistance to level high-velocity lane switching. However, now, that I am back on the grind and working all day, these adaptions have been lost and I am back to constant fender benders. Still, it is goodd to know that the capactiy is there.

Plans for 2023
One year ago, I posted on this blog that my main goal for 2022 was to do more experiments. I did exactly zero and so I am not posting any plans for 2023 here.