Filmnut

Annual Review: 2018

Dec 30, 2018 at 12am

Much like Nicholas Felton's totally awesome and inspiring Annual Report, I've always wanted to write up a personal year-end summary of the things that I did, consumed, and accomplished that year. Below is my first attempt, which summarizes 2018. Hopefully I keep up this tradition and, 60 years from now, my kids have many of these to read.

Films Watched

I saw 52 films this year. That’s a far cry from my pre-kiddo life when an average year busted into triple digits. Alas, I’ll take 50+ as a solid win.

Below is a breakdown of the film ratings that I doled out in 2018:

Of the films that I saw this year, below were my top 10 (in order of preference).

Call Me by Your Name (released in 2017)
Roma (2018)
The Wolfpack (2015)
Phantom Thread (2017)
Eighth Grade (2018)
Dina (2017)
A Most Violent Year (2014)
Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan (2016)
Lady Bird (2017)
Filmworker (2017)

TV Shows Watched

In 2018 I saw one or more seasons of 17 television shows, about half of which were based on documentary-ish shows (i.e., mostly-non-scripted, based on a true events).

Each show that I watched in 2018 is listed below (in order of preference):

Music Listened To

According to Spotify, I listened to 16,190 minutes of tunes this year (though, as I write this, there are still some days left in 2018).

My most listened to artist was Drake at 28 hours, followed by SZA, Hayden James, Kacey Musgraves (who liked one my tweets!), and Dawn Golden.

My most listened to individual songs were (in order):

Below are my favorite newly discovered artists from 2019 (in order of preference):

If you’re into this sort of thing, dig into this Spotify playlist which is comprised of the tunes I listened to most in 2019.

Podcasts Listened To

We are probably living through the golden age of the podcast -- there's so much great, and incredibly targeted, content to choose from. Of all the different mediums listed above, I probably consumed the most content from podcasts this year.

Below are the weekly/monthly-produced podcasts that I frequented the most in 2019 (in order of preference):

In addition, below are the season-based/single-run podcasts that I completed this year (in order of preference):

Serial (Seasons 1, 2, and 3)
Heaven's Gate
Mogul: The Life and Death of Chris Lighty
Slow Burn (Season 2)
Last Seen
Ponzi Supernova

Weight Loss

I had an epicly awesome year on the scale! On January 1st I weighed in at 184 pounds -- oof. On December 31st: 164 pounds. I lost 20 pounds exactly in 2019!

How did I do it? I ate less food. Like, a lot less.

Losing the first 10-12 pounds was not terribly hard. I aimed to eat 1,200 calories per day, and usually 90% of those calories came from one large meal (almost ways dinner). Other than coffee in the morning, I mostly fasted all day until dinner, skipping breakfast and lunch. The weight came off quickly.

Once I got to 170 or so pounds, I stalled big time -- eating less no longer resulted in pounds lost. That’s when I started doing full or multi-day fasts. I wrote about my longest fast (three days) in this blog post. Through out the year I completed a few fasts, each between one and three days long. This approach got me down to 164 pounds.

My goal for next year is to get down to 157 pounds. That’s only seven more pounds, but losing any additional weight at this point is incredibly hard. The obvious next move is to start exercising (yuck!), which I’ll probably end up resorting to in 2019 to hit my goal weight.

Places Traveled

I traveled to 13 places in 2018. Most of them work-related (I do a lot of onsite trainings for Onit clients all over the world) -- a few were family trips.

Below are all of the places that I traveled this year (listed in no particular order):

Mumbai and Pune, India (pic)
Belfast, Northern Ireland (pic)
Abbott Park, Illinois, USA
San Jose, California, USA
New York, New York, USA (twice) (pic)
Newark, New Jersey, USA
Austin, Texas, USA
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (pic)
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (pic)
San Antonio, Texas, USA (pic)
Los Angeles/Orange County, California, USA (I blogged about this trip)

Far and away my favorite trip was to Disneyland with Jeannie and Brighton. The DL is one of my favorite places on Earth (I've gone by myself before, as a grown ass man); seeing it through my two-year-old daughter's eyes was amazing.

Other Tidbits

Below are a few other interesting stats and events from this year:

I had 10 cavities filled. Yikes! This will hopefully teach me not to avoid the dentist for three years.
Jeannie and I celebrated our five-year wedding anniversary in May. Here’s to 100 more!
Brighton turned two in August! Insert obligtory statement here about how fast time is flying by and that she was just born yesterday (all of which is true!).
We bought a new house in October (but still haven’t moved into it, as we’ve yet to sell the old house). The house was built in 1935. Just to put that into context, the following events also took place that year: Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to New York; Porky Pig made his debut; U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Hoover Dam; and Elvis Presley was born.
I moved into a new position at Onit. I now lead our Training & Certification Team, comprised of five rock stars. We did a ton of awesome stuff this year, including a bunch of trainings around the world (see above) and launching an Onit certification program. Also on the Onit-front: I was invited to do the Onit podcast this year -- listen to my episode here.

And that's it! A great year -- here's to an even better 2019!