Butingtaon's Corner

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Looking back on 2021

A lot of my neighbors over at the fediverse have all begun making posts recounting the highlights and lowlights of their year, the things they were proud of and their hopes coming into 2022. This sounded like a great idea, as I think that gratefulness is something that we should cultivate more, so we may gather the strength to weather the incoming crises.

As I tend to get rambly, i think this would be better if I wrote it as a blog post instead of a toot.

Things I'm proud of

personal growth

Love means being vulnerable, love means letting yourself be hurt. For myself, love is when you know that a particular person is worth the pain. Growing past one's own shell, carefully crafted to not let anyone in, is a painful process, but if you love the person enough, you will do it despite the difficulty. I have never felt this motivated to grow and become a better version of myself before.

Love makes things grow

Learning how to self-host

I dove head-first into hosting my own websites and web services under the Kapuluan.link domain. Learning how to get past CGNAT using PageKite , and then eventually Reverse SSH and getting the various software to work in the ways I want them to was both frustrating and rewarding at different times. Mostly rewarding.

I'm still not at a level that i'm satisfied with (assuming that's even possible), but I can at least confidently offer free hosting shell accounts to friends and family if they want or need to set up a website. My uptime now mostly depends on the uptime of the VPS I'm using as a relay, the power and internet availability here at home.

I dont even notice whenever Amazon goes down hahaha

(Begin) building a personal memex

One thing that surprised me a lot was how I was able to squeeze in the time to write a bunch of scripts that eventually became the static site generator for this particular blog, turning it more into a wiki or memex in the process. Still working on integrating other tools , time-tracking and more into it as time goes on. A big milestone I'm hoping to achieve this year is to create a local-only dashboard with a summary of my current progress in various recorded parts of my person.

Taking up plaintext accounting

I began keeping a log of my financial transactions this year. Although it was tedious to get into the habit at first, the information this reveals is more than worth it. I need to figure out a way to integrate this into my memex system.

A more stable material base

While I'm still forced to trade my labor for money to survive, my living situation is now a lot more stable than it was a year ago. I have a savings bank account with actual savings in it now! If I wanted, truly wanted, to buy or create something, it's now within the realm of possibility to go out and get it. This newfound freedom is surprising, startling, even. Though only achieving it at my age truly reflects the amount of bullshit one has to go through to self-actualize when you're stuck under the weight of history.

Things I can improve on

Eat healthier

One of the biggest things that caught me off guard as my circumstances improved was how so easy it was to just fall into binging on so much fast food. Based on my ledger entries, Fast Food was among my highest expenses, second only to my share of the house's internal budget.

Exercise more

The past two years of lockdowns have made it easy to just sit down and consume a mind-numbing amount of media and leave the physical body to atrophy. I have to fix that. With the lockdowns easing (I think?, Omicron might put a stop to that really quick, though), I should take the opportunity to walk around more.

Dedicate more time to spiritual cultivation

Being stuck in a loop of working and resting only to work again , I'm certain I've fallen off of the Path. I need to dedicate more time to meditation and pathworking. Find time to rehearse my rites and actually schedule doing it somewhere isolated.

Be more open about my emotions

Unlearning prior conditioning is a big part of what needs doing, that includes my tendency to clam up in the face of painful emotional stimuli. I need to learn how to better articulate when I am hurt, how I am hurt, but in a way that does not assume malice on the other party's intentions. Don't worry about it , it's all an illusion anyways.

My hopes for the coming year