Briathrail // Albert 2MNG

I just got back from a somewhat long vacation back home. I had some time for myself to think where I am, where I was before, and where I can be this year. I’m not getting younger. I do feel that my “single years” are starting to get repetitive and I need to make changes. How much is the question. However, anything is better than nothing.

But I don’t want to set unattainable goals either. That would suck.

I have put this here for myself. I’ll make a followup blog post at yearend to see which ones I got done and which ones I unfortunately did not.

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• I plan to make even more changes to my social media and online consumption habits.
  
  Facebook, for all its myriad faults and definitely-creepy ad tracking, is the only place where my family, relatives and school friends reside in, so I have no choice but to retain some form of usage… but maintain it to a slimmer usage and stick to my goal of keeping tabs on them and maintaining contact once in a while. Fortunately, my phone tracks app use so I can monitor myself.
  
  X (or Twitter, if you want) is still a (somewhat) good place for posting, so as long as they stick to letting free users stay free as a minimum. It’ll be my default secondary (as it’s tied to some services I use), but I plan to stick rigidly to my quarterly access schedule – January, April, July and October, manually posting my blog items every now and then in bulk. I still see the place as viable anyway. Also, I have no more desire to sign up on other social media that pops up every now and then. I find that the more things I sign up for, the harder they are to maintain. The less “accounts” I keep active, the better. I merely decided to keep the ones I still have. When Facebook, X and LinkedIn fully devolve someday (trust me, they all will at some point), that’s it for me on social media.
  
  The one I finally plan to fully ditch is… Reddit. Their business model of letting unpaid and unvetted users “mod” subreddits and having various moderation policies that are way more volatile than Trump’s mood swings is not a good place to be in. Now here we are, and I’m done. I’ve seen it devolve in the past four years, and I’d happily leave it soon. So, maybe in a few days, I’ll have only two places to see shitposts in. Well, forums too, but those are now niche. LinkedIn exists, but it’s basically shitposting done by people in officewear.
  
  I don’t have Instagram, TikTok nor Snap – so at least I don’t have to bother with detoxing from video-based brainrot.
  
  Regarding YouTube, I started unfollowing and removing certain streamers from my main page recommendations last week. Especially the streamers that have reactions as a large portion of their content. I started to find many of them confrontational and irritating early last December, and I went cold turkey and unfollowed them all late last month. I kept a small amount of VTubers, streamers and content creators that I found pretty harmless and generally sticks to what they do best. More manageable and way less stressful to maintain my regular watching habits with a decently-sized shortlist. Foodies, snarky commentary, sports, nature documentaries, animal stories, gamers.
  
• Making my own Netflix account.
  
  For years I’ve leeched on my brother-in-law’s account sharing, but I find that I’d rather mold my own account to fully suit my own preferences (and avoid the “did you change the password” talk). I avoided using the “like” functions as well, for I was using the profile meant for my dad to use. I did not want him to use it someday to see that I rigged it to show him endless anime and art film recommendations. And also, Singapore’s Netflix has WWE.
  
  Ah man, if only Netflix SG would also stock up on more older Hong Kong movies.
  
• Only going home to PH once a year instead of twice.
  
  I went back home twice in 2022, 2023 and 2024, always in June and December. I like doing it, but it’s always a tax on my wallet as well as a pain in the ass when it comes to planning my vacation leaves, it forced me to make a lot of concessions to make it happen. Also going to airports, however lovely, are still taxing. So the plan this year is to have one international weeklong vacation trip somewhere by June, and one Christmas-time 2-week vacation back home.
  
• Speaking of international trips, a soft goal in pencil is to go outside of Asia at least once before my age gets in the way.
  
  I feel the winds changing and I have to make it out at least once. In 2017 I had the dream of at least getting out of the Philippines at least once, and I did it twice on a pity budget. Now that I have spare change, I should. Time and age isn’t on my side, and it’s getting late, so better cross it off my personal bucketlist before I have to commit to other things.
  
  Big plan for the international vacation in June is Europe with a stop somewhere that allows for brief layover visas. I’m trying to save more money so I don’t have to go cheapo on hotels there and enjoy a nice trip.
  
• Making a commitment to seriously limit online shopping – at least after Nintendo releases the Switch 2.
  
  That one is a big purchase I have to do, so I’m saving at minimum SGD 800 for it. After that, it will be a hard limit. One purchase session for every quarter, then. No more than 200 SGD. Less clothes, more utilitarian. Like protein powders.
  
• Start sleeping earlier than 1AM on incoming weekdays.
  
• Limiting my white rice intake to within 4 times a week.
  
  Fortunately, a new yong tau foo stall opened up in the canteen area near my workplace, so off to a great start, I guess. Man, constantly eating rice in the Philippines can really pack those pounds up. Rice in the morning, rice for lunch, rice for dinner.
  
• Lessen overthinking solutions to my programming tasks.
  
  Sometimes I overengineer, and I end up “refactoring” my own solution to a more simpler one. This is one of my main goals this year because it affects my career. Make things simpler, without compromising performance nor integrity of output.
  
• Attend at least one blind date. I admit I’ve barely left my “workaholic wallflower” planet of isolation. So that one would be a challenge. And yes, one of my main goals.
  
• Lastly, get under 200lbs.

There, that should do it 🙂