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What’s something you’re personally proud of from this year?
Tell us something you’re proud of.
Celebrate your successes! Pat yourself on the back!
Bragging about yourself is not only allowed but encouraged in this topic.
If you’re naturally humble and don’t know what to say: pretend like this is a job interview and you have to sell everyone here on your strengths and successes.
I grew up with an alcoholic dad and a functional crack using mom. They fought often and loudly, and installed a massive inner and outer critic in me, as well as cPTSD, self esteem issues, drinking problems, and other problems stemming from anxiety. My teeth are unkempt from freeze dissociation, my body is large and in charge from binge eating, and my impulses are reactive and protective against change and it's caused me to close myself to several romantic relationships which had to be ended due to insecurities.
I was living with my mom and we were "taking care of each other" in that we were enabling each others destructive habits and learned helplessness.
As of this month, I have my own place which is within walking distance of my full time clerical job.
This is my first time living in my own apartment and I am over the moon about it. It is safe, it is clean, there is no broken glass, no fleas, no eternal filth that can't be scrubbed from beneath the service. I truly feel like my life can finally begin.
That's amazing my guy! Congratulations!
What an amazing story and I can't imagine the weight off your shoulders it must be to have a new beginning like that. Keep kicking ass!!
I started the book club here. I took a risk and people responded. I was a bit anxious setting it up not knowing whether anyone would want to participate.
I went to Guatemala to level up my Spanish.
I knocked doors for the election.
Finally moved to the Netherlands to live with my partner. Ever since I was in my teens it's been a dream of mine to leave where I was born for so many reasons. Earlier this year the wires finally crossed in my mind and I realized that because of my EU citizenship I can quite simply get on a plane and leave, which is what happened earlier this week.
The reason I'm proud of it is because I haven't really accomplished much by myself throughout my admittedly still young life. At almost every turn, I had the help of family, friends, you name it, to get me out of trouble (of which I had a lot due to a long lasting computer addiction). Even my old job was only landed through connections, even if I was eventually good at it. I'd never been financially responsible enough to save up a decent amount of money, on the contrary, a few years ago I found myself in debt from silly and unnecessary purchases. It took some massive life changes, including a transition and an ADHD diagnosis, to realize that if I don't get my shit together I'm going to end up stuck.
At the start of the year I told myself enough is enough, and for once in my life, it worked. Not perfectly, I still made mistakes and overspent, but not nearly as much as I used to. Now, after working much harder than I ever thought myself capable of, I'm almost out of debt and have a net positive in my bank account. I broke out of my horrific online addictions, I arranged work by myself, I arranged the first few months of living by myself, and now nothing really feels as hard. Years of forcing myself out of bed finally paying off.
Every time I peel back another layer of depression off of myself and look back, I struggle to believe that I managed to do it. I'm not sure how many more are left, but it's certainly getting easier to do it. Hopefully by next year, I'll be able to get rid of it for good.
Love your story!
What do you feel clicked inside you to finally engage towards that mindset and way of life?
It's hard to say, but I think that as I escaped the depression that took hold of me in my teens it just naturally happened. I never felt like I had any real agency in my life because, well, I didn't care enough. I was a passenger in my body, and I liked it that way, especially after growing up as largely a social outcast due to undiagnosed ADHD and most likely autism, among plain old bullying.
I can trace it all back to four years ago when I started therapy. Though I stopped after a year and a half, it gave me the perspective I needed to understand that something was very wrong with how I lived, and that it didn't need to be that way.
But really, the trigger was meeting my partner. Having someone who wanted me to make the journey and believed in me to boot was more motivating than I knew it could be. Every time I started to spiral, they'd pop up in my mind, and something inside of me gave that extra push.
Honestly all my achievements this year have been really small but they feel big to me. I've been really creatively fulfilled -- from Minecraft builds to game critiques here on tildes to editing for friends to cooking for my family to, uh, the plot-heavy lesbian erotica that I will NOT be taking questions about -- none of it has been groundbreaking, or been seen by more than a handful of people, but it's kept me engaged and satisfied and proud of my work.
I also feel like I have been, for the first time in my entire life, in a good-ish place mentally. It's helped to almost completely ditch social media (unless you count this place and YouTube); it's helped to focus on and treasure those close to me. The main thing, though, has been to find a love and forgiveness for myself and the world that once seemed unfathomable. Still got a ways to go, and the world still seems trying and scary, but at least we're getting somewhere. And at least I no longer crumple immediately at the first sign of crisis.
I finally finished my weight loss journey! It took about three years, but I've lost a cumulative 90 pounds without any major setbacks, and without falling into disordered eating. It's the first time I've felt truly happy with my body.
As someone in my mid-twenties (who's still afraid of thunderstorms) I often feel positively infantile compared to the broader Tildes community. And I kind of feel self-concious about the unremarkability of my achievements. But at the same time I feel like it's been a pretty good year for me, and I've achieved almost all my personal goals, even if that's not a high bar to clear.
How much would you say achieving smaller goals helped towards the bigger goals?
Maybe it's intuitive but I think the smaller goals are the larger ones. Take weight loss. Unless you're, like, a UFC fighter, you can't lose multiple pounds in a day. It's inherently going to be a slow process -- but also, incremental change is easier to accomplish. I didn't have to stop eating my favorite foods, or skip meals, or any of that -- just get used to slightly smaller portions. And once I was in that habit, weight loss became intuitive, and easy, and something I didn't have to think about.
So too with everything else. "Become mentally healthy" seems like an impossible goal. "Monitor your reactions to stimuli, and practice dealing with them in a healthy way" is both more concrete (if you've been to therapy) and less intimidating. And suddenly after years of this you look back and are shocked at how far you've come. It's not just that "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step;" the journey is the steps, and it will probably be easier if you think of it in that way.
I quit my well-paying job almost exactly a year ago due to mental health reasons. Decided to bootstrap my own video production + strategy business, which is a personal passion of mine. Two months later, I found out my wife was pregnant. I was very stressed about money and was considering finding a new job or at least something part-time to help prep for the boy. It was nauseating watching our savings dwindle away.
My wife talked me out of the job search and told me to stick with it. Spent months pouring through census data and other research to write a 15-page business plan. Came up with my own strategy frameworks and production processes. Built my own website. Forced myself to network even though I hate it.
Now I have three clients I really like working with. I'm not making anywhere near my old salary yet, but we're staying afloat while taking care of a 2-month old to boot. And even though he's screaming his head off right now, trying his hardest to shit his pants, it has been extremely rewarding to bet on myself and come out okay on the other side.
Oh my... I could write a whole book on that, I'll try to keep it short.
I always felt I wasn't "good enough", or "unable" to do basic stuff. I've been wanting to cook for more than a decade now, wanting to have a good cleaning routine, wanting to be better at my job (teaching, better at grading papers on time). I thought it was just an effort issue, I just didn't want it bad enough.
Meanwhile, my social life is so healthy. I have a very good group of friends (~10 people), 5 of them are my very close friends, I have ~4 other single friends I keep up with throughout the years and my work collegues really like me and make me feel welcome. Yet... I could never shake that feeling that I wasn't good enough. And I was right. People would tell me things they did and I could never even fathom the idea that I could do it, I just couldn't...
One day, this summer, I caught COVID. Since teachers have summer off, I thought man, that sucks. I had planned a weekend with my friends where we smoke pot and play boardgames (Spirit Island, mainly). We've been doing this for years and missing it bummed me out.
One thought creeped my mind: hey, I planned on getting baked and playing, why couldn't I do that alone at home? So I did. It blew me away.
I'm in my thirties now and smoking pot was always a group thing, I never wanted to get addicted, but smoking alone that weekend, alone with my thoughts made me realise a ton of stuff. I delved deep into my own psyche like I had never done before. It was an amazingly positive experience. I guess smoking alone isn't too bad.
Fast forward two months, I had another free weekend open up and one thing creeped in my mind: what if instead of using pot to "have fun", what if I used it to do my chores? Oh sweet jesus... guys.
A month later, I got my ADHD diagnosis, used pot on the weekend to do all my stuff and I have never been more productive than I was the last couple of months. I booked appointments I should have booked years ago (dentist, general practitioner, physio, etc.). Bought myself furniture I had wanted to get for years (new mattress, new computer chair, new desk, etc.). I've finally been able to fit in more grading time inside my work week, I started creating new documents for my students... and FINALLY, I have a good cooking schedule. It's the first time in FIFTEEN years that I've been able to cook consistently for more than two weeks, I'm so happy for that.
I still don't have medication (they are awaiting some tests for my heart), but I've smoked for myself every weekend (just way lower quantities, like half a 12% thc joint a day) and it's been fantastic.
Finally, the path forward seems hopeful and I can work towards projects without feeling like it's too much. It's like I finally unlocked delayed gratification, and it's amazing.
Over the past few years, I've been trying to put myself out there more in an effort to overcome my social anxiety. New social situations are anxiety-ridden nightmares still, but I've been successfully forcing myself to participate in them anyway. Frustrating thing is that 80% of the time I'm completely fine in the moment. But the irrational fear of the 20% can be paralyzing in the run-up to social events. Some highlights this year:
This is the hardest part of being a DM, scheduling issues are inevitable. I've never played a D&D campaign through to completion, and the few games I've run have always fizzled out too. I've learned to prep less, and make campaigns short, 3-5 sessions max. Lately I've been practicing at improvising entire games with a couple of friends who are new to the game, so they don't really have any frame of reference if it doesn't go amazing, but it went pretty well all things considered.
I learned this lesson VERY quickly! Blood, sweat, and tears were poured into that first session's plan and long story short, content got cut, we went weeks without playing at a time, and scheduling just got harder and harder. It's unfortunate, but I am thankful for having had the chance to try it and flex my creativity a bit!
As of yesterday, it has been a year since I had my last cigarette. I smoked daily for 17 years. Most recently I was smoking a pack a day, which cost a little over $11 here. In addition to the obvious health benefits, I have easily saved over $4,000 in the past year by not buying cigarettes. In truth it's much more than that as I'd often grab a breakfast burrito or a mountain dew while I was in the gas station buying smokes. I almost never even go inside the gas station anymore, which is probably my favorite benefit.
Unfortunately, health wise, I don't feel much different. Nicotine is a stimulant, and without it I've been steadily gaining weight. People talk about food tasting so much better when they quit, and I haven't really noticed that at all. My sense of smell has improved tremendously, though that isn't always a benefit.
I still get cravings, though not daily, and I have dreams about smoking. Anti-smoking ads will often make me want a cigarette real bad, which I find amusing. Many of my peers that quit smoking around the same time just exchanged it for something else like vaping, chewing, or the new craze the nicotine pouches. It feels good to be completely nicotine free by comparison.
I survived.
Great to hear!
Got married in February, offer on a house was accepted in the summer, and our first child was born in November. Settling down speedrun complete. The wife, house and son are all beautiful and perfect and going to last forever. I honestly don't know how two of the most disorganized people I know managed to pull off so much in a single calendar year, but we did it.
I got married late last year, but we hadn't lived together before getting married and were both late bloomer introverts, so it was pretty rocky at first. However, we've both made fantastic progress in the relationship in the last year and love her more every day :D
I finally made the big move from the city I'd grown up in (Kansas City) to Washington, DC. A city I wanted to move to for several years now.
I've done interstate moves before. Mainly as a child (Chicago to KC. KC to Salt Lake City, and then back to KC), but also for college I went out-of-state (Chicago). But as a Real Adult™ I've never moved. Especially since it's a sorta double risk. Will I like a new city, and will I like the new job? Regardless, I really wanted to leave. Hell, I was the last of my family to leave KC, when I always thought I'd be the first.
But I did 4mo ago. I can't say I love my new job. But I do like where I'm living. I'm surviving, maybe even thriving to some degree, here. So I'm happy I finally pulled the trigger and sorta threw caution to the wind and did it. Now I know I can do this again. And I want to do it again.
Though maybe not for a while because moving halfway across the country is a lot of work, kinda a pain in the ass, really expensive, and stressful! It sucks all around. I'll figure out the job situation, but for now, probably just best to stay put. Keep feeling it out, seeing where it goes, if it gets better. And if it doesn't, there a million opportunities here. Many more than when I was in KC.
I've grown massively in both my hard and soft skills. I'm training to be a lighting programmer and designer -- at the start of this year I barely knew how to use a lighting desk. Now I'm a lot more confident in presenting my ideas, I'm impressing my peers as well as faculty, I've made invaluable connections and I have three shows as lighting designer under my belt, with a fourth starting rigging second week of the new year. I hope to go to university to further hone my skills.
Two big accomplishments for me, first is I took up cycling at the beginning of the year. Joined multiple group rides, met some amazing people, rode my first century and clocked in just under 3,000 miles for the year. It’s felt so good to find a hobby and community that really clicks with me.
Second accomplishment was a big jump in my career, I moved around a number of jobs this year, unable to find something that interested me. A few months ago though I found a great company and amazing team, made the jump from senior engineer to engineering manager, am building a team from the ground up and building a greenfield application. Super exciting stuff and I haven’t been this interested in work in…well ever.
I started my first eBay affiliate website! I'm proud of what I built but at the same time I feel a mixture of hope and doubt. I don't like talking about the same things over and over--which is kind of required to be successful in creating backlinks. I like incrementally improving things instead of that.
I'm hopeful for the future but also equally terrified and depressed.
Well nobody but me has known I had a problem so I've had nobody to tell, but I'm pretty proud that I've been (99.9% sober) the entire year for the first time in probably a decade. Lost a good bit of weight and been exercising and generally feeling a lot better, feels like it's been one of my better decisions in a long line of bad decisions.
I don't usually feel pride about anything I do. I feel like most people should be able to do those things because it's hard for me to do even the most basic chores.
However one thing is some physical things. I am in awful shape, but there have been a few times this year where I have walked 10+ km in one day, despite feet and legs starting to hurt after only 2 or 3 km. I also hadn't been on a bicycle in over 3 years, and managed to last about 15 km on an electric tandem. My legs gave out though so my friend did all the actual cycling for 25 km more. My ass started hurting already after 5 km lol, but I perservered through the pain and it also hurt for several days after.. then about 2 weeks ago I got on a (non-electric) bicycle and did 14 km! Again, legs gave and I was pushed for the final few km - to be fair there were really, really strong headwind as well. And I also got off and walked for maybe 1 km at the end, and also my ass once again hurt for days after lol