2022 In Review

Written January 3, 2023

• Winning the Broadway lottery and having front row seats for Six w/ Charlie

• Hamilton

• Wicked with Marshie and Charlie

• Taking Charlie to see the Lion King

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge time with Marshie and Charlie

• Cory Wong concert at Friday Cheers with Marshie thanks to a recommendation from Jake

• Saw Movements at Canal Club with Bryson

• Such an amazing Landmvrks and Miss May I show

• Started Playing Tennis with Robert

• Took a Tennis lesson with Holger Schmidt

• Started playing Tennis on Wednesday nights with Marshie and Charlie and then going to Galley afterwards

• Charlie joined Richmond Montessori School

• Katniss becoming incontinent

• Bought a Playstation 5 from a guy in Southside in the snow

• Apple claiming water damage in Marshie’s M1 Macbook despite the water indicators being intact and non-reactive

  • After much fighting they ultimately decided to reimburse the cost for the display in Marshie’s computer.

• Found a PCP and found out I had a vitamin D deficiency

• Spent two weeks in New York this summer

  • Ate at Los Tacos No 1 (really, really good tacos and Horchata)
  • Visited The High Line.
    • Saw https://streeteasy.com/building/520-west-28th-by-zaha-hadid
  • Won the lottery and took Charlie to see Six on Broadway
  • Lin Qiu reached out to me on my birthday.
  • Took Charlie and Pietra to the Museum of Ice Cream
  • Saw Marcel the Shell
  • Checked out Design within Reach and Herman Miller in SOHO
  • Visited Little Island
  • Crunchy Cereal Milk Shake at Milk Bar
  • Tried a Matcha Latte at Chalait
  • Breakfast at Maman
  • Ate at MeMe with Marshie
  • Saw Hamilton
  • Tried out the Away Backpack, but didn’t end up liking it
    • Ultimately bought the Evergoods CPL24. Love it
  • Visited Oula Health in Brooklyn, NY
  • Learned how to do laundry in New York
  • Learned the coffee shops in NYC purposefully don’t have public restrooms so that people don’t stay all day. They assume that eventually you will need “to go.”
  • Rode bikes on Governor’s Island
    • Charlie hit a dog and scraped her hand and knee. Thankfully the dog is okay.
    • Great food on the island
  • Took Charlie to see Six on Broadway. We had front row center seats from the lottery. It was amazing. Show was great and Charlie is obsessed.
  • Made Minifigs at Lego
    • Made a character for Marshie
  • Had breakfast at Maman in UWS.
  • Had a Matcha Horchata Latte at Chalait
  • Ate at Los Tacos No 1 again. Best taco I’ve had
  • Ate at MeMe with Marshie
  • Tried a Matcha Latte at Chalait.

• Going glamping with Marshie and Charlie

• Dorsata onsite in Charlottesville, VA

• Richmond, VA
• New York Trip
• Charlottesville, VA
• Wintergreen, VA
• Massanutten, VA
• Farmville, VA
• Mathews, VA
• Whitestone, VA
• Bath County, VA
• Salisbury, NC
• Roanoke, VA
• Sea Isle City, NJ

• Started the year at 340 subs

• Gained 3,437 subs

• 30 Videos published

• 516,244 views

• 35,864 watch hours

  • (1494.33 watch days)
  • (4.09 watch years)

• I stumbled upon my Save Chrome Tab Groups with Tabox video from a year ago and the quality difference is pretty significant. Same sweater, much better video quality.

• Defined a YouTube Video Process and learned the importance of thumbnail, title, and hook to the success of a moc/YouTube video

• Improved the audio and got the microphone out of the shot with the Rode Videomic NTG

• Settled into a cadence of one video every two weeks

• Alchemy
• The Design of Everyday Things
• Four Thousand Weeks
• Building a Second Brain
• The Inner Game of Tennis
• Range Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Still Reading)

• Ordered my first eInk tablet, the Boox Note Air 2 Plus
  • This led to one of my most popular videos I’ve done and also opened the wonderful rabbit hole into eInk Tablets
  • Kit Betts-Masters reached out with a question and then promoted the video. (Thank you, Kit!)
• Got the reMarkable 2 in for testing (ended up loving it)
  • Learned that I don’t hate the Ballpoint pen on the reMarkable 2, only the Fineliner.
  • reMarkable 2 made screen-sharing and connectivity free
• Reviewed the Supernote A5 X
  • It is also great.

• Started a Blog (brandonkboswell.com)
  • It runs on Obsidian and Hugo
  • Established RSS for it
  • Did a video on it ( Link)
  • Established Branding for the Homepage
• Laid the technical foundation for a Newsletter
  • Have started getting sign ups, but haven’t started writing for it yet (27 subscribers as of EOY 2022)
    • “People are preordering your thoughts”. —Bryson Davis
• Started the Knowledge Workers Discord Community ( https://discord.gg/v4qdKMughq)
• Obsidian / Second Brain
  • Wrote an Obsidian plugin, Obsidian Weekly Review Plugin ( Link)
  • Stood up a dashboard for Areas in Obsidian
  • Started a Content Calendar in Obsidian
    • It worked okay, but wasn’t perfect
    • Still looking for something that I stick to better
  • Set up Obsidian to automatically back up to Github. The last thing I need is to lose my PKM system because it’s not backed up. ( Link)
  • Created Backlogs in Obsidian
    • Gaming Backlog
    • Idea Backlog
    • TV Backlog
• Got a Smoker and learned how to smoke a few things:
  • Salmon
  • Chicken
  • Ham
  • Chuck Roast
• Got into the Readwise Readwise Reader Beta ( Link )
• Got comfortable controlling OSX without Mouse
• New PR on Peloton
• Marshie and I’s 10th Anniversary
• Re-did the dining room
  • Got 8 dining chairs from Charm School for $200
  • New table
  • New Chandelier

• Camlink

  • Made it much easier to record live videos

• JDS Atom+

  • Sounds better than the Schiit Magni Heresy and is significantly more reliable

• Getting an iPhone 13 Mini.

  • I love this thing
  • I wish it had 120hz display, but otherwise I love this thing.

• Herman Miller Embody

• Womb Chair Replica from Rove Concepts

• Got new eyeglasses from Warby Parker and got them adjusted.

  • Got prescription sunglasses as well.

• Mastodon — Feels like Twitter of old. Which is a good thing- Lululemon Commission Pant

• Godox SL150W II

• Found a new color picker from Sindre Sorhus. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/system-color-picker/id1545870783?mt=12

• Sony A80K

• Sparkle 2 is the spiritual successor to Zuma

• Finished Death Stranding

• LanguageTool

  • I can use LanguageTool to get Grammarly style feedback in Obsidian.

• Quartz

  • Got the Blog running using Quartz

• Packing away old T-Shirts to reduce stress

• MeetingBar

• Super Duper Keyboard

  • Bound Hyper + Backspace to Forward Delete
  • Migrated my Karabiner config to .keyboard and posted it to Github at https://github.com/brandonkboswell/keyboard

• Obsidian Quickadd Plugin

  • Found the Quickadd plugin for Obsidian and dropped the majority of my Obsidian Templater hacks
  • Unbound CMD+N from New File in Obsidian to be QuickAdd New File. Now everything is added through QuickAdd.

• Akiflow

• DaVinci Resolve

  • Ultra powerful and free
  • Learned how to zoom with anchor points in DaVinci Resolve

• Descript for A-Roll Editing

• New M1 Macbook Pro

• Lori Bed to convert the guest room into a Stretching and Yoga room.

• Arc browser

• AirPods Pro (Second Generation)

• Yabai

  • Set up Yabai Stacks to get a full screen mode that is more like what I am used to.
  • I am really enjoying Yabai. It is a much bigger lift to set up, but is much less janky than Amethyst

• Began tracking notes on my outcomes when cooking in the cooking folder so that the next time I cook something, I can benefit from my learnings the previous time. Don’t Start from Scratch

• Figured out how to bind the Quick App Launching as Toggles.

  • Started with TickTick, but now I’ve migrated my whole Karabiner file over
  • Got the app toggle behavior the way I want with Hammerspoon. It’s incredibly fast and responsive. Significantly faster than using the previous applescript. I now use this to toggle open Obsidian with Ctrl+Space similar to how I use hyper+space to open Akiflow. You should have instant access to your utility apps
  • Later moved this to rcmd
  • Figured out how to run Hammerspoon commands from Karabiner

• Learned how to get CSV output from jQ.

• Swapped over to Warp as my terminal of choice

  • Later swapped back to iTerm

• Had more productive morning time by avoiding time traps like Twitter and Feedly

  • Learned to avoid my phone and Time Traps during the morning routine to get the most out of my most productive time of the day
  • Avoid your phone for the first hour of the day
  • Move Readwise to lunch time along with Wordle to up more time in the morning

• I took Readwise’s Bionic Reading study and found that I read 17% faster with Bionic reading.

• Adjusted my daily template to just use: “Today was a good day because:” for reflection

• Shifted my left monitor back to portrait so that it can show me more of the list content I consume in TickTick, Slack, Akiflow, Obsidian

• Realized I can open any url from my clipboard in a web browser by pasting it into Alfred

• Decaffinated Coffee can still make it difficult to get to sleep

• Daily & Weekly Reflection is difficult when I’m not on my routine. Especially during the Holidays

• I learned that I avoid/struggle with self-promotion due to being accused of bragging as a child.

• Read the content you’ve already curated instead of looking for more via RSS.

• Connected the softbox to a smart plug to make it easy to turn on and off.

• Tasks that aren’t immediately actionable shouldn’t be in your To-Do list they need to be incubated somewhere else

• The importance of starting the day with a plan

  • If you expect there to be time and energy at the end of the day for your daily highlight you are setting yourself up for failure
  • Avoid phone usage before lunchtime as a goal.

• Weekly Planning

  • Working from a pre-planned week makes the morning routine significantly easier.

• Reducing Distractions

  • Trying hiding the bookmark bar to try to remove it as a distraction.

• Started documenting my Areas of Focus

• Learned about the ABZ Framework. I need to figure out how to apply this in projects.

• Research as a form of procrastination

• Doing a dedicated script-writing session prior to record videos.

• Consume less content, produce more

• Updated Daily template to include this day last year. Revisiting the journal entry from this day one year ago

• PARA‘ified my Google Drive

• Reviewing my journal entries from a year ago has been rewarding and insightful