This year I focused on losing weight, learning Arabic and making vlogs.
Besides, many amazing things happened within the frame of this year. I hit many milestones, enriched my life with many novelties and bettered the quality of my life by a ton. Let's go over them:
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I lost 24 kgs this year.
I reduced my focus on weight lifting and moved it to my diet and appetite control.
I started working with a sports nutritionists and he helped me find a diet that I can stick for months.
From time to time, I got tired and paused losing weight a few times in the year but I didn't allow the scale to go up much.
I wrote (and still writing) a detailed weight loss journey on this Twitter thread, read it if you want to witness the psychology of weight loss.
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I studied Arabic for 300+ hours.
Last year I was studying Arabic from Duolingo to break the ice with the language. However the app is not enough to learn enough grammar or get deeper in the language.
I ditched Duolingo and enrolled in a free course: Whatsarapp. Although the course's curriculum is far from ideal and the style is not suitable for everyone it helped me get serious with learning Arabic.
Whatsarapp requires you to do daily homework for six months to finish a level. There are three levels. I finished the first level and quit during the second level before I die from boredom.
In the meantime I was studying with a tutor in Preply for one hour every work day. We did 140 hours of live lessons and in which I had to speak Arab-glish. This boosted my speaking a lot and with the book we covered, I got better in reading and listening too.
I watched Arabic series, talked a lot with my Arab friends and started learning Arabic keyboard and handwriting ruq'ah.
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I published 70 vlogs and reached to 10K subscribers on YouTube.
I made many videos in vlogging format and published them on YouTube. I developed a love-hate relationship with it.
When I don't vlog I miss it and get upset, when I vlog I stress about the numbers for the videos.
On the last 40 days of the year, I started vlogging daily, which is crazy and I still question if this was a good decision or not. It moved me in a position where I'm motivated to live a richer life to help with the content. But at the same time this creates a certain amount of stress in my life: I need to live a rich life, every day!
I have around 1000 people who continuously watch these daily vlogs and appreciate them but I don't really know how long I can keep it up.
I think I have to establish a healthy relationship with vlogging but I'm still figuring out how.
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I became more physically active.
Walking to and from the office became a daily routine for me this year. I walked for hundreds of kilometers and this helped my regulate my appetite and burn some extra calories.
I played soccer for the first time since childhood. I've been playing with some random folks every week until the winter came. I played for 10 matches and witnessed my cardiovascular performance to increase every week.
I did some occasional runs too and saw that running is much easier now with my decreased bodyweight. I didn't focus on running since I repeatedly experienced that it makes controlling my appetite harder.
When my brother was staying in my city for a month, I played basketball with him everyday and I remembered why I liked the sport.
Along with riding skateboards and scooters, I rode my bike as a means of commuting and I loved how the variety of available options makes my commute more fun.
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I fell in love with skateboards, again!
I started riding skateboards back in my university years with a cheap cruiser board. In 2018 I bought my first longboard and although I occasionally gave it a try I never really committed myself to it.
This year I gave it a go after my nutritionist wanted some extra cardio time. Running / walking on a treadmill was boring and it was getting harder and harder to move my heart rate to the recommended zone without feeling pain. One time I tried to move around with my longboard and couldn't believe how my heart rate would go up without me even noticing!
From that day, I started riding my board almost with every possibility. At first it was 3-5 mins rides to the mosque and back.
Then I started commuting between home and office for 15-20 min rides.
Fast forward to today, I own three boards:
- an Oxelo Longboard
- a glow in the dark 22 inches penny board
- a Landyachtz Tugboat
and I love them!
My balance on them getting better everyday and I hope to keep this hobby for long years.
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I attended my first running event and ran my first 10K.
This was something I was hoping for years and finally it happened!
In the past years I had trained myself to run very slow 5K runs but I had never done a 10K before.
This year with Konya Half Marathon I encouraged a group of friends into attempting a 10K, cold turkey!
It was more fun than we expected and we promised each other to keep joining running events from that moment on!
My unofficial time was around 1 hours and 32 mins but now that I am much lighter, I am hoping to see better numbers in the future!
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I found peace with weightlifting.
I removed every aspect of weightlifting which stresses me out. That way I feel more positive towards it and can regularly practice weightlifting.
First I ditched lifting heavy weights (not doing powerlifting anymore) and then removed complex movements, variations and calculations.
Instead I'm focusing on working out with fundamental exercises such as bench presses, overhead presses, dumbbell curls and barbell rows.
I start from my most favorite exercise and move towards the least favorite.
After struggling with the mental tax of regular heavy weight-lifting, I found peace with this new mental model of mine.
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I kept reading books but not as much.
I kept reading in the mornings as a habit and read six books this year. Although I was expecting to read more this year, it's still a win not losing the habit.
These are the books I've read:
- The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
- Zero to Sold, Arvid Kahl
- Zero To One, Peter Thiel
- Sprint, Jake Knapp
- The Lean Startup, Eric Ries
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Eric Jorgenson
Maybe one other thing I failed in reading is that I couldn't spend as much time on my notes as I did last year.
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We visited California for three weeks.
Seeing Bay Area, Google and Meta campuses, Stanford University and living in Santa Clara, San Jose for three weeks, was a big experience for us!
We really loved the nature and the cities, experienced how might our life be if we were living in the Bay Area and saw how different California was than the other states we have seen before.
I visited a few friends in the area, went to redwood forests (the most magical experiences I've ever had in my life) and walked the coast of the ocean.
Kids spend hours on child museums, playgrounds and zoos where we did bunch of shopping.
I feel like the USA will keep attracting us in the future!
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I built an AI-based app proof of concept.
I created an app named Bookwise that helps extract useful information from non-fiction books with the help of OpenAI's APIs.
My confidence in building apps increased and for the first time I tried AI-assisted coding while building this app: it was a breeze!
Although I don't practice a lot of coding these days, it's great to know that I can still code --although with the help of AI-- and build apps from ideas.
I don't know if I ever finalize and publish this project but it's relieving to see that I can still create software!
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I bought a lot of new gear.
- I bought my first iPhone (15 Pro Max) after being an Android fan all these years. I chose to buy it because the quality of their cameras matches my video production enthusiasm.
- I bought DJI Mic, a wireless two-microphone kit that you can connect to your smartphone. This really helped me in my vlogs and combining with the Pro Max camera, I can shoot from creative angles and distances without messing up the audio.
- I bought my first smart watch: a Garmin Enduro 3. This watched encouraged me to walk, run and hike more than any other thing. It has an awesome battery life, it can track activities and sync with Strava in a breeze. It has a lovely flash-light that I use on a daily basis. I really like how it looks and how it complements my sports outfit too!
- I bought my first drone: a DJI Neo. Besides enriching my vlogs, Neo showed me how fun flying drones would be. I can see myself buying more drone gear and trying FPV piloting in the future!
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My mood was not really stable during the year.
I realized I felt down for more days than before. I don't know the exact reason but I feel like I lack some greater purpose in life. Now that I have a happy life, healthy body and a loving family I don't know what to pursue in life.
It's almost the same feeling when you establish a well-functioning base in a survival game. It's like yes, you did it, you survived, but now what?
You still need to keep playing and make the game fun.
I feel like, from now on, I need to find some artificial needs and goals to make my life interesting.
Daily vlogging came out of this, buying a drone too. I don't want the empty and boring feeling. I love being busy with things and when I'm not, I feel depressed.
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Some other facts about the year:
- I invested in real estate for the first time in my life. I learned a lot about the domain and became more confident in investing in real estate.
- I started seeing my high school friends more often.
- I ate hundreds of protein bars this year and planning to eat more.
- I realized I like eating fruits everyday, this is weird as a person who is known for his lack of appetite towards fruits in general.
- I kinda stopped working out my legs and started focusing on my upper body. For some weird reason I can deadlift 100+ kgs where as I struggle to bench press 50 kgs.
- After losing weight my upper body is too small compared to my lower body. I have to the enlarge my upper body by exercise and cut more fat from legs by losing 5-10 more kilos.