Wrapping up 2022

Although I've posted nearly every day for the past two months, I am down a bit for posts for the year. This is my 170th post this year and post #2499 overall. My first post of 2023 will be #2500!

I don't know that there is much to glean from my experiences of 2022. I can't look back and see that it was a particularly good year, nor was it a bad one. I enjoyed some time with friends and family, but have also parted ways with a few people along the way. 

I was looking at my social media accounts recently and made a few observations. 
Facebook is my longest held account and now consists mostly of relatives which I apparently have a bunch of! While I don't have many past coworkers as FB friends, my associations through NATCA (the Air Traffic Controller's Union) probably account for the next largest group of "friends." There are fewer friends from church (or past churches) than I would have guessed, and fewer still from classmates and people from my hometown. I think I have way more social media friends than actual friends, but that's probably true for all of us.

Instagram has a lot of crossover followers from FB, plus a bunch of people that I don't really know but like their content. I like that I can follow someone on IG and they don't have to follow me back and vice versa. I do try to limit the bot followers on both IG and Twitter. I could probably tighten up my privacy settings, but haven't. I have fewer followers than on FB, but am I following more accounts that don't follow me back.

Twitter is my most used account as far as where I scroll and look for news or content from others. I follow a few celebrities and authors, but mostly I use Twitter for news content from a number of varied sources. I follow more than twice as many accounts on Twitter than I have as FB friends and also have the most followers of my social media accounts. 

I rarely use the "story" features of accounts and seldom post any original video content. 
I try to assess my social media usage from time to time to make sure it's not getting out of hand and isn't going to get me into too much trouble from a security or content issue.
I do spend way too much time watching the stupid (but often entertaining) videos that are posted. That's the time suck I find myself in most often.

*****

Since I use the Kindle app on my phone for reading, that is most likely the area of greatest screen time. I have read on my Kindle app every day this year (sometimes only a chapter or two) and am up to 495 consecutive days. Even though i do read every day, I have finished just fewer than 80 books (78) this year. I know that is still a lot of books; it's just fewer than I was expecting.

*****

I got a haircut yesterday (the first is several months) and shaved my face. Now all I have to do is lose 60 pounds by midnight and I will look clean and healthy to start 2023!
Maybe I'll get a little more exercise next year. Maybe I'll smoke fewer cigars. Or maybe I'll end 2023 much the way I'm starting it. I pretty much take things as they come and try to enjoy the present moments of life. I hope to see more of you face to face in the coming year. If not, we can continue to meet here or virtually on another platform. 
Here's to 2023!
May it be a good one for all of us!

John