Spotify recently dropped the end-of-year “Wrapped” playlist. Many of my top songs are neoclassical since that’s what I listen to the most while journaling in the morning (Ludovico Einaudi has been my top artist for the last 10 years!)—I prefer music without words when I write. The rest of the list is mixed: lots of Sia, Latin Pop/Reggaeton, and electronic/techno remixes. Some R&B, soul/pop, and Chinese. Then, a few random Japanese, German, and French songs in there.
As year-end approaches, I thought doing a quick “Wrapped” for my writing in 2024 might also be fun. Re-reading what I wrote this year feels both familiar and distant: familiar as it’s my voice, but also distant since I am no longer the same. One benefit of writing is that it crystallizes a permanent snapshot of me. These snapshots become concrete proof for me to look back later on and say, “Ah, this is where I once was.” It’s a pretty grounding experience to know where I’ve come from. The downside is that I must also confront my own naive thoughts and immature writing from the past. I often facepalm myself while reading an old piece, “That was what I wrote?” I suppose that also means I’ve grown.
The stories I enjoyed writing the most this year were the personal ones, like how I got my driver’s license (Part 1, 2, 3), conversations with my barber, my middle school basketball game, and losing my wallet. When I first started writing, I avoided personal stories: Writing about myself felt self-centered, and the stories didn’t seem extraordinary. But a few of my friends told me they quite enjoyed them, and now I feel more relaxed to try. What strikes me is that the process of writing surfaces details I didn’t know existed in my subconsciousness. It allows me to make sense of an old story with a new perspective.
Writing, I’ve also come to realize, is about attuning to the details: Small things make the story. In that sense, it’s similar to photography. Sometimes you go to a cool place—this year I was fortunate to have visited Sedona, Yosemite, Macau, and Bangalore—and taking interesting pictures is easy. But it’s not necessary to go to a new place for good photography. The extraordinary stuff is often right under my nose—the trees, the squirrels, and the flowers—but I just am not aware enough to see them.
I thought about ending this project a few times. I did stop for a few weeks because too much was going on, and I thought that might be the unceremonial end of it. But after resetting, I picked it up again. I am still not entirely sure what makes me come back time and again. One hypothesis is that this project is a rare space for me to work on something not as a means to an end, but as an end itself: the point of writing is to write. That stands in contrast with most other endeavors in my life, where the point of doing something is in exchange for something else. Another hypothesis is that it creates space to process what matters to me, rather than following an agenda dictated by others.
I also had fun reading other people’s stories. I dug deep into the stories of how a Japanese guy created the Game Boy, how Bruce Lee created his own brand of martial arts, and how mixing ideas often create interesting results. But the stories that brought the most relief were the ones about how people handled losses. Phil Hansen’s journey of becoming a versatile artist despite a tremor in his hand was inspiring, and so was Beethoven’s story of losing his hearing at the apex of his career as a performing pianist. As I age, I’ve come to appreciate that losses are inevitable. It’s helpful to know how others handle them.
All in all, I’m happy I kept up with this project. It’s wonderful to consistently practice a craft and have something I can point to at the end and say, “I’m slowly becoming better.”