2022 Reflection Pt.1: L Year

Hello everyone, once again thank you so much for reading. I would not be here without y’alls support, really means a lot. This is the first part of my 2022 Reflection, part 2 will be released next week.

I had so many L’s the first half of this year.

It all started when I got COVID this year in January. I had no symptoms luckily but some of my housemates were definitely going through it. The worst part was the Quarantine. I quarantined for 10 days. These 10 days drove me actually insane. The first couple of days were fun, just staying in my room, watching videos and tv shows, playing video games, making music, but after the 5th day my mind was going insane. I started to go on walks and then started to gym as I never had symptoms but staying in the house was hell. I felt that I was trapped in a cage but luckily I had Tri in which we had our own socially distanced excursions that made it bearable. Eventually I made it out and life felt great being able to be a “normal” person. However the mental damage was already done.

Through this experience I learned that fun is only meaningful when their is hard work behind it. I need to have a balance of being productive and having fun. Fun is only meaningful when it isn’t your normal. This is why so many people lose their passions for the activity that they used to do for fun when it becomes their job. We need to have balance in this aspect of our life, we need to balance our purpose and our freedom, our work and our play. But this quarantine really threw me off. It messed up my mental and drive to do more in life. I didn’t recover until I moved back to Cerritos, crazy.

Lesson: You cannot enjoy play without work. Balance is necessary to appreciate both.

During this same Era I met a girl through a mutual friend. We started talking a lot and even went out a few times. I learned a lot through this interaction especially for what I want in the future and what to avoid. TLDR she was covered in red flags and I am glad I had the sense to realize this was not it and ended it. I ended it really badly LOL, which did not help. However it did affect me and I lost interest in women for a while. I guess this experience really just broke my world and my expectations presenting me with situations I would have never fathomed. However glad to have this situation and it thought me what I would want in the future and what girls to avoid. I realized that my mutual friend was also insane and had a lot of mental health issues I was stupid to ignore that her friends were probably just as crazy.

Lesson: Look at the person’s friend group, it’ll give insight into who they really are.

Winter Quarter was also my worst quarter to date, and I got the lowest GPA. A combination of getting mentally derailed by COVID, school being online then switching into person back to online, and having to take lower div GE’s. Having to write a big research paper, having annoying professors, and having class online but tests in person was also super annoying. Also living 20 minutes away from campus did not help and being in San Diego while it being cold and dry did not help either. However this failure is my fault. I was not ready to have school again in this messed up format of not knowing whether class next week was in person or online because the university kept switching up stuff on us. I haven’t properly studied in like years since before COVID. I got a 4.0 during my fully in person fall qtr so I had hopes for my winter qtr but I was wrong. I remember coming back home for an entire week because I mentally could not take care of myself anymore and had lost all motivation for school. A dark time indeed.

Lesson: Have to be organized and on top of things before taking on a new era.

Then I graduated and was presented with unlimited freedom. I graduated in march earlier then anyone of my homies. This meant that I had no one to share this excitement with so it didn’t really hit that I graduated. I also mentally graduated after my fall qtr, so most of winter qtr I was checked out which probably led to my poor performance. All in all graduating did not feel like a big deal because I graduated on Friday at 10:30 AM, and had to wait another 3 months to walk.

April came along my first month being done with school. I had no responsibilities other than keeping myself alive, a big struggle at the time. Imagine that for all of your known life for all of my 21 years, I had school. I had someone telling me where to do, where to be, and what to do. Now with having that gone and having no forced structure, was so difficult. I was so god damn bored all the time. My time after graduation has been me being bored out of my mind and having no friends to kick it with. With the girl I met with January, once I cut it off, I also lost the friends I made in that group, so I didn’t have anyone other than my housemates. My housemates also had their own responsibilities, classes, and job hunting, so they were way busier than me. I was watching so much tiktok, still had instagram, and drinking so much celcius, overall doing habits that were messing up my mental health. Crazy how much of a better spot I am in life now and how I have changed many of my habits. Most of the month I was finding time to kill time or entertain myself which was so hard to do.

Lesson: Having external structure is great but true success is achieved when you have mastered internal structure.

Then for some egoistic reason I decided to take the DAT, because I wanted to beat my 22, which was already in the 99th percentile, so I don’t know what I was thinking. Studying for this test was the hardest its ever been because I haven’t hard core studied for ANY test since my first DAT. I would lose focus in like an hour and was getting scared because I forgot that I had to know so much information. For the month of may I grinded, spending hella hours in the library and studying in the nights. The test gave me this structure that I lacked being out of school. Then I took the test and got a 21. I started crying as soon as I saw the result. This was the first time I cried this year. All the pain from all those L’s were stacking up hit me right here. I really though I could do better, but I guess not. I failed. I haven’t had a significant dubs in like 5 months, so I just felt so low. However I recovered pretty quickly after conversations and reassurance from my mom and dad who supported me through this time, truly grateful for them. However this was an important failure and since then Life has only been on the up and up.

Lesson: Be grateful for your failures, because they will teach you the most.

A much more happier, positive, dub-filled part 2 comes out next week!

Thank you for readings, let’s grow together 🙂