In last year's post, I focused mainly on my health. This year, I wanted to write a holistic review of my year and talk about things in addition to my health like work, pets, home life, and other things. First, let's start with health.

Health

This week marks a full year of being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (UC) and naturally, I'd like to reflect on how that's going.
The medication I take, mesalamine works fine if I consistently take it and I was great about consistency earlier in the year but in the latter half of the year, I have regretfully been pretty bad about taking it consistently. A few things I learned over time, I started taking the medication twice a day, once around breakfast and then around lunch time but it seems to not make a difference if I split it or take it all together. I take 4 pills currently so that means I was splitting it as two pills each time but now I just take all four in the mornings.
On days I forget or can't take them in the morning, I limit myself to take them during the earlier half of the day and try not to take any after about 5pm because then I'd be overwhelming my liver if I take four more the next morning. This is something I would need to monitor over time because processing four big pills (each around 1.2g) is a lot of work for my liver.

Here's a sort of correlated view of my consistency in taking the pills, this is based on my food logging but it lines up pretty well because if I log my breakfast, I usually am taking my medication at that time. Unfortunately, Apple Health doesn't do a great job of showing how many days you took or didn't take medication (it requires you to log the skipped days).

Heart health

Last year, one of my goals was to improve my resting heart rate (RHR) mainly by increasing my daily physical activity and a more consistent workout schedule. I'm mostly happy with the results even though I didn't hit the goal of under 60 ʙᴘᴍ for my RHR. Here's a screenshot of the latest per month:

The bad news is that the 66 ʙᴘᴍ is actually 1 beat higher than 2023 so I will need to improve that for next year. In a more conservative and attainable fashion, I'm going to aim for 63 ʙᴘᴍ as my goal for next year.

Weight changes

One of the toughest things to deal with during my initial UC flare up last year was the continuous weight loss, I went from about 135 lbs to 121 lbs within 3 months. This was due to not being able to absorb most nutrients and also because I kept rushing to the restroom with any food in my body. My muscles became weaker and weaker day by day, at one point being so weak that I couldn't go upstairs without taking breaks.
At the beginning of this year, with the help of a temporary stint with steroids and mesalamine, my hunger increased to no end. I was eating 2,500–3,000 calories a day, so my weight rebounded and then went past my previous peak weight within 2 months. You can see that below:

You might notice that my weight has sharply dropped in December, this is due to recent travel and having a pretty bad flare due to the travel and stress. Over the last two weeks, I traveled to Europe and then came back home and hosted some family. This led to a lack of care and attention toward my eating and exercising.
I think my body feels best at home with a routine and ample amount of food available to eat throughout the day, travel throws both those things out of the picture pretty easily.

My goal for 2025 will be to improve my overall weight by increasing muscle composition and hopefully hit 145 lbs.

Moving on, let's focus on something different next.

Pets and home life

A big new addition to our family and home life has been Rosie. She was adopted in July and she has grown from a little 12 lbs puppy to a lively 40 lbs teenage dog. She is a smart and loving dog who eats anything she finds. Unlike Samson, she is very active and very mischievous.

I'll share some photos of the other pets just to keep an archive of the pets:

Other happenings at home include the changes to the wifi system, I wrote about that in the big summer update. I also got a PC for gaming, meaning it does run Windows, I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077 and Manor Lords on it.

Work

Earlier this year, my friend Matt and I were just texting about something when he mentioned his company is looking for a software engineer. This was January so about 6 months since I had left Block and was mainly just focused on taking care of my health and so I wasn't sure if I was going to be interested in working. My original plan was to take about a year off from work and focus on building projects I had on my mind, that wasn't going great and also as the UC got worse, I wanted to focus on taking care of my health as well. But when opportunity comes knocking, I did not want to be the one to turn it away.

I'm happy to say that I've been at Numeral for almost a year now and things are going great. I am doing some of my best work, I feel productive especially towards things I'd like to get done. The company is full of talented and friendly people. I believe we're solving a real problem that exists currently and the tech stack is just a cherry on top. We're using Next.js with all the fun things that go along with it.

Music

This year's Spotify Wrapped was a disappointment and so I'd like to ignore that and use the trusty Last.fm overview to figure out my yearly trends in music.

My top tracks are a mix of sleepy music and actual music I listened to during the day. A few that stick out:

1. I'll be around by Yo La Tengo
2. Pink Moon by Nick Drake
3. Mother's Love by The Vernon Spring

And artists, nothing new really:

1. Fleet Foxes
2. Cat Stevens / Yusuf
3. Nick Drake

I listened to a total of 20,969 tracks according to Last.fm, my highest year by far. This could be due to me working a lot more and having few meetings, allowing me to listen to music in the background.

Looking forward

I think every year, I move closer to some goals and farther from others. Next year, my focus will continue to be on my health. I'd like to write more often so I can share my progress and also I want to introduce writing about code, finances, and socialization. To me, the past few years have been an extended pandemic because I have resisted going outside, not out of some paranoia but because I don't like being away from home and the pets. Here are some SMART goals based on themes:

• Better health
  • Gain weight to about 145 lbs, by following a consistent workout schedule and eating routine. The goal's progress is going to be ongoing by I hope to make most of the progress in the first half of the year.
  • Improve heart health by lowering my resting heart rate, doing cardio at least twice a week. Goal RHR is 63 ʙᴘᴍ by the end of 2025.
• Stable finances with less chaos (this could be a post on its own later on)
  • Decrease the number of accounts and credit cards I have, I will achieve this by slowly removing credit cards and other accounts once a month.
  • Reduce spending on unnecessary retail like clothing, shoes, and tech. This will be done by only shopping at stores that carry necessities and not doing window shopping (IRL or online).
• Socialize more
  • Find a new hobby that requires me to interact with people as part of the hobby, so no online gaming, solitary reading or coding outside work.
  • Develop the habit of calling one family member everyday.

I'll come back to these high level themes throughout next year and see how they've been working out. I don't want to pick up too many goals to the point where I don't even touch one.

Here I leave you with one song from this year that I really liked: