The Year Of Spanish: 2022 Goals & Accomplishments

by A Purple Life, posted in Annual Accomplishments, Blogging, Early Retirement, Film, Finance, Fitness, Food, Hobbies, Keto, Musings, Relationships, Reviews, Travel
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Throughout the year, I like to jot down new things I’ve learned, read, watched and experienced to try and remember what each year entailed. I then summarize all of that in my annual goals and accomplishments posts. The goal of these posts is not just to curate what I’ve been up to, but also to document how I have changed from one year to the next and how I’ve grown as a person.

I also like to give each year a theme in retrospect. This year I had a hard time deciding what the main theme was – should I call this The Year Of Fitness? The Year Of GlobeTrotting? The Year Of Spanish 🙂 ? As you can see in the title above, you know I picked Spanish, but it was a hard choice.

This was obviously the first year I traveled internationally since the pandemic began and actually spent 1/3 of the year outside of the US. However, I also continued my running journey and even doubled down by having fitness challenges every month for the first half of the year in addition to my running goals.

But then I realized – despite both of those aspects of 2022 taking up a lot of my time and energy, (in a rewarding way 🙂 ), my main goal and the thing I spent the most time doing this year was LEARNING SPANISH!

I had the goal to go from 0% to conversational fluency in Spanish in 2022 and I did it!!! Despite trying to learn French for 5 years and Italian for 2, I now speak better Spanish than I did either of those languages – despite my decrepit 30+ brain 😉 .

Reaching fluency in Spanish apparently takes about 450 hours and that was my hours goal for 2022, which comes out to about 9 hours per week. Often, such as when I was taking daily 4 hour Spanish classes in México, I went way over that weekly goal.

Anyway, the time commitment made me decide what the main theme for this year would be and it is a celebration of me becoming bilingual 🙂 . But what else did I get up to? Let’s see 🙂 .

Physical

My physical goals this year were just to keep the balance I’ve found in my previous retired year – keep sleeping well, eating keto unless I’m in a new location, and meeting new running PRs.

Food

My approach to food continued to evolve this year. I talked about this at length in the below post, but overall I found a good balance between being keto, counting calories, and hitting my protein goals when I’m in locations I’ve visited before, and going all out to explore new places through food.

I originally thought of this setup at the end of last year, but this was the first year I put it into practice and it worked really well! I’m going to continue this pattern in 2023 and see how it works since I’ll be visiting more new places.

Exercise

My exercise goals for 2022 were to:

  1. Run 1-3 times a week
  2. Run a sub-10 minute mile

Like everything in life, my running ebbed and flowed this year as a result of health, weather and the availability of trails, but overall, I hit my goals!! I ended up running on average 2 times per week in 2022 and in November, I hit a sub-10 minute mile in Buenos Aires, Argentina without even trying!

I also had a lot of revelations around my new running hobby, which I talked about here:

In addition to running, I also wanted to add other physical challenges this year to my roster. I often did these monthly with my Mom and they included:

February: 30 Day Squat Challenge
March: Squats
April: Squats, Plank Challenge (35 -> 60 seconds)
May: Squats, Bicycle Crunch Challenge (20 -> 62/day)
June: Push Ups, Squats

After June I started focusing again just on running and stretching so I could hit my sub-10 minute mile goal.

Sleep

As I reported last year, my sleep is now fantastic compared to when I was working. Most of the time I sleep easily, deeply and well, and awake refreshed! Such a novel concept 🙂 . And if I get sleepy in the early afternoon, I just take a nap – it’s awesome.

In 2022, I also started to build in rest days since I learned from hanging with people more than ever this year that to be my happiest and healthiest self, I need 8 hours of sleep a night and a fair amount of downtime to recover from social activities. Even though I’m super excited to see people in a less pandemic plagued world, I can’t go full throttle without building in rest because then I get tired in multiple ways, such as losing creativity and being sleepy when awakening after 8 hours of sleep.

Vitamins

Last year I learned about the positive effects Vitamin D and Iron had on me and I’m still taking them daily. Something new is that I added a daily generic brand Zyrtec to the mix and that has been helping with my asthma as well.

I also have a Melatonin stash for when I really can’t sleep, but that hasn’t been used more than maybe 10 times all year. It’s surprisingly rare and it makes me happy to see how many of those pills I have left 🙂 .

Discoveries

My main discovery that helped me physically this year was the Habits App (called Loop Habits in the Android app store) that I’ve mentioned in my monthly updates. Having that checklist of things I need to do each day, such as take my pills, run, brush my teeth, floss etc as well as the timed reminders you can set up, helped me keep those good habits all year long. It’s a super simple, but effective (AND FREE!) app that I’m so happy I started using.

Mental

My mental acuity continues to be awesome! I think this is a result of several things. One of them was all the research I continue to do, such as looking into locations we’re living in, the things I see while exploring a new place, and whatever I’m curious about (e.g. why is that sand purple? why does that tree smell like that?). All of this is the fodder for the Fun Facts Nobody Asked For section of my monthly recaps.

In addition to looking into things way more than when I was working because I have the mental space to do so, I’ve also been curating my life and thoughts more than ever before, which makes me really happy. I’ve always loved curation, but once again, never had the space in my brain or the energy to do so and now I do.

So I’ve been curating those things on this blog with my monthly recaps, on Instagram with my reviews of restaurants, films, activities etc, and now on Goodreads with my book ratings and Letterboxd with film ratings. Curation for the win! I was curious if this would just be something that happened in the first year of retirement and would peter out, but that’s not the case.

Resourcefulness

One way I saw my mental acuity improve this year was in my resourcefulness. Here’s an example:

Outside of that incident, I have also become a bit of a master at making random yummy meals in the last few days in a location with the strange assortment of ingredients I have left in the house. Also instead of freaking out at a travel issue, I’ve been able to take a deep breath and fix it. I suspect this has to do with my emotional state as well (which I’ll get into below), but overall I’m able to look at problems that crop up in my life and analyze and fix them in ways I couldn’t before.

Another example of this happened in Argentina. I was at my friend’s apartment and her toilet broke. I knew that she was too busy for me to text and that her landlord wasn’t super responsive (and obviously that interaction would be in Spanish, which I was apprehensive about since it was my first day speaking Spanish in a new country).

So instead of calling anyone or Googling anything, I just opened up the toilet to see what was up. I poked around and thought I had identified the issue and then tried to fix it and: IT WORKED!!! This is not something I had ever before attempted without the assistance of the internet, so I was SO excited to see what I am now capable of 🙂 .

Learning Spanish

As you can see from the title, learning Spanish was my biggest goal this year. I’m going into every aspect of how I went from zero to Fluent in its own dedicated post soon, but here’s an overview of what I did this year:

  • Started and finished Duolingo Spanish
  • Lived in México for 9 weeks
  • Lived in Argentina for 5 weeks
  • Took 7 weeks of intensive Spanish classes
  • Watched 16 hours of films in Spanish without subtitles per month
  • Did daily Duolingo Stories
  • Created a Spreadsheet to track new Spanish words, phrases and conjugation
  • Taught myself all the Spanish tenses
  • Spoke with my Argentinian ex-roommate over videochat in Spanish weekly
  • Spoke on the phone with my Mom in Spanish weekly
  • Only texted my Mom in Spanish since May
  • Watched Spanish FilmTube
  • Listened to Spanish Finance Podcasts
  • Followed Spanish-Speaking FIRE Accounts
  • Created Drawing-Based Vocabulary Cards and placed them all over the house
  • Changed my Phone language to Spanish since August

Within all that, these are the films I watched in Español (my Netflix subscription has never gotten a bigger workout 😉 ) :

Películas (Movies) En Español

  1. The Spy Who Dumped Me (Mi Ex Es Un Espía aka My Ex Is A Spy)
  2. The Other Guys (Los Otros Dos)
  3. Pacific Rim
  4. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
  5. Tremors (Temblores)
  6. Pitch Perfect (Tono Perfecto)
  7. Burlesque (Noches de Encanto)
  8. The Accountant (El Contador)
  9. How To Train Your Dragon (Cómo Entrenar A Tu Dragón)
  10. Megamind (Megamente)
  11. Star Trek (Viaje A Las Estrellas)
  12. Long Shot (Casi Imposible)
  13. Men In Black (Hombres de Negro)
  14. Jaws (Tiburón)
  15. Encanto
  16. Jurassic World (Mundo Jurásico)
  17. Jurassic Park (Parque Jurásico)
  18. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Olvidando a Sarah Marshall)
  19. The Wizard of Lies (El Mago de las Mentiras)
  20. Thor Ragnarok
  21. Jurassic World 2: Fallen Kingdom (Mundo Jurásico: El Reino Caído)
  22. Jurassic Park III (Parque Jurásico III)
  23. Aquaman
  24. Ocean’s 11 (La Gran Estafa aka The Big Scam)
  25. Bourne Identity (Identidad Desconocida aka Unknown Identity)
  26. Finding Nemo (Buscando A Nemo)
  27. Sherlock Holmes
  28. Mean Girls (Chicas Malas)
  29. Constantine
  30. He’s Just Not That Into You (A Él No Le Gustas Tanto)
  31. Resident Evil (El Huésped Maldito aka The Evil Guest)
  32. Clash Of The Titans [1981] (Furia De Titanes aka Wrath Of Titans)
  33. Wanted (Se Busca)
  34. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Señor & Señora Smith)
  35. The Sea Beast (El Monstruo Del Mar)
  36. I Love You, Man (Te Quiero, Hombre)
  37. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter y El Cáliz De Fuego)
  38. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter y El Misterio Del Príncipe)
  39. Knives Out (Puñales Por Aa Espaldo aka Daggers In The Back)
  40. How The Grinch Stole Christmas (El Grinch)
  41. The Holiday (Vacaciones)
  42. Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (Sherlock Holmes: Juego de Sombras)
  43. 21 Jump Street (Infiltrados en Clase aka Class Infiltrators)
  44. A Cinderella Story (Una Cenicienta Moderna aka A Modern Cinderella)
  45. It Follows (Está Detrás De Ti aka It’s Behind You)
  46. Klaus

Series de Televisión (TV Shows) En Español

  1. Snapped (Crímenes de Pasión)
  2. Elementary (Elemental)
  3. Succession (Sucesión)
  4. Law & Order: Criminal Intent (Ley y Orden: Intento Criminal)
  5. Top Chef VIP Telemundo
  6. Ted Lasso (Season 1 & Season 2)

Podcasts En Español

  1. De Peso A Peso
  2. El Club De Inversión

Emotional

Emotionally, this has been my best year yet. This actually makes me think it might just get even better 🙂 . 2022 saw the least depressive episodes ever in my life and my anxiety at an all-time low overall. I’m not sure if this is a result of the pandemic becoming less of a concern or me getting into the flow of retirement and not earning money or what, but I’m very happy that’s the case 🙂 .

I also had a revelation this year! Being able to schedule downtime has been sensational for me emotionally. Either it’s because I have my period and can’t move because of the pain (I literally don’t know how I used to drag myself into an office while feeling that way), or because I’m burnt out on socializing and need an introvert reset. Being able to clear my schedule and just give my body what it needs has been lovely, and I believe contributed to my constantly improving emotional state.

Hobbies & Skills

My hobbies continue to expand in retirement 🙂 . For anyone who has ever asked me, “Do you get bored?” the answer continues to be a resounding NOPE! And if I’m feeling snarky, the answer is “Only the boring get bored” 😉 . So here are the skills I’ve built (or continued to build) in 2022 as well as the new hobbies I’ve acquired:

Community Engagement

Yes I’m calling this a hobby 🙂 . I made an intentional effort to engage more with my communities this year. Whether that was through leaving comments on blogs I enjoy, joining a Discord, or engaging with a new section of Twitter: I was in it this year! I joined subreddits of my favorite shows and movies, checked out running discussion groups, and generally found more lovely parts of the internet 🙂 .

Travel Reviews

Another thing I’ve done this year is lean into my childhood dream of being a reviewer of many things: films, food, flights – the works 🙂 . I post all that stuff on my Instagram if you like that kind of thing, but I also had a great time sharing the food and experience reviews with Tripadvisor after a few small businesses asked me to. They understandably wanted to get more recent reviews after pandemic-related closings, so I was happy to oblige 🙂 .

I also have expanded to include these kinds of reviews on this blog when I feel like it:

Audio/Video Editing

As a result of agreeing to speak at the Financial Feminist Summit earlier this year, I had to figure out how to record myself talking (to myself) for 40 minutes, and then how to edit that footage to send in for the summit. This is not a skill I’ve ever had before and I was surprised to discover both how difficult it is to talk to myself with energy for 40 minutes, (how do YouTubers do it?!?!), and how challenging editing can be. However, I have now learned the basics and can add this to my skills roster 🙂 .

Blogging

Obviously blogging was still one of my major hobbies in 2022. I wrote 57 posts and I also had the high honor of being a Plutus Award Finalist for Blog Of The Year for the 4th year in a row. In addition to that, I got a lot of random opportunities thrown in my lap as a result of this blog. I will go through those in the below post if you want those details.

I was also able to meet more readers this year while traveling around, which has been absolutely wonderful! I sometimes forget that people are reading this blog, so it’s a nice reminder that y’all are out there and every time I meet you, it’s like finding a friend I didn’t know I had. Super cool 🙂 .

The Accountability Beast 

My #AccountabilityBeast ways continued in 2022! I’ve now been bothering people every Wednesday to do things for a few years now, and I still enjoy it as a way to check in on what y’all are up to 🙂 . This year, I also separately continued to bother one other person: I text my sister-un-law bi-weekly to remind her to send her freelance invoices and have heard that helps her a lot 🙂 .

So far, this is about the upper limit of my reminder capacity in retirement though 🙂 . I’m maxed out. I also continued to have the Patreon someone requested I set up, so 8% of people in this Twitter thread can pay me for the service.

Out of that, one fun thing that happened is that a reader joined the Patreon for accountability to retire from their job in March and live a fully retired life. It was super cool to talk to them and see that process in someone else’s life.

Bird & Nature Identification

As you might have noticed, I’m obsessed with birds 🙂 . I went from thinking of every bird as “a bird” to recognizing some local birds by sound and being able to visually identify most types of birds by shape (even when they’re backlit)!

This year I’ve seen and identified 85 different kinds of birds across 8 US states as well as México and Thailand!

Apparently my prowess has extended into the internet sphere because some people tag me asking what kind of bird they’re looking at. For example, someone sent me a bird they saw in Germany and I was able to successfully identify it even though I had no idea what it was. An actual natural scientist also answered this question and confirmed I was right!

And here’s another example from a separate investigation:

My curiosity with identifying birds also extends to all of nature. When going for a walk, I stop a million times to take pictures and then look up plants and flowers that I don’t recognize (it drives my partner nuts 🙂 ). I collect information on all the new plants and animals I see in my monthly early retirement recaps, and constantly am shocked at how many things I didn’t know about our world.

To help me identify these plants and animals, I use these apps:

  • Google Lens – My favorite for identifying pictures of flora or fauna (birds included)
  • Merlin – My favorite for identifying bird songs
  • Audubon – My favorite for identifying birds visually without a picture
  • Seek – A reader recommended I get this app to help identify plants and animals in Thailand and I’ve found it helpful everywhere because it just lists the most common things you’ll see in any area

Astronomy

So I’ve always been obsessed with space and the stars, but never took the time to look at them before retirement. I might notice the moon is a little brighter than usual on my walk to meet friends or something, but that was the extent of my astronomy prowess. Well one of my goals in retirement was to be more one with the world and learn about our night sky, and I’ve learned so much!

I used the free Star Walk 2 app to help me identify constellations I don’t know and planets I’m not certain I can identify on my own, and after that, I was off to the races! I now always know which way is North and as a result, can usually point out what planets are in the sky and several constellations throughout the year (even though they change with the seasons 😉 ) .

I have been intentional about stopping and watching a pretty sunrise or sunset. I have on my calendar when every full moon takes place to make sure I go outside and watch it while reading about why that month has a unique full moon name (all of them apparently do 🙂 ).  I also do my best to catch any meteor showers that have high visibility in my area, which has led me to see some gorgeous shooting stars 🙂 .

I have info on all of the above things I’ve seen in my monthly retirement updates here in case you want more in depth info on my experience and how I learned about the sky.

Writing

This year I volunteered to edit a personal finance friend’s romance novel that they wanted to publish. I also joined a writing club with two people who are working on amazing fiction books I want to help them finish because I want to know what happens!!

In addition, I completed NaNoWriMo for the 3rd year in a row and only the 4th time in my life, so this is now officially a hobby! NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month and the writing community challenges every person to write 50,000 words during the month of November.

For comparison, that’s just a little longer than The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald at 47,094 words. Once again, retirement is coming in clutch and allowing me to focus on things I love – like writing which I do most of the year, and then freaking out during the month of November trying to write like the wind 😉 .

Finance

I think finance is an official hobby at this point 😉 . And this year, I helped a few friends and family members (at their request) improve their financial lives! This included:

  • A friend came to me after realizing their 401k rollover wasn’t invested and I helped them figure out how to open a Trad IRA to drop it into and invest it
  • Another friend told me they (at 35) want to retire by 45 and I started helping them with a financial plan
  • A friend read The Simple Path To Wealth at my recommendation
  • A family member added The Simple Path To Wealth to their economics curriculum after reading it at my recommendation as well 🙂
  • I introduced a family member to my favorite retirement calculators, cFIREsim (for the number) and Engaging Data (for perspective from data) so they can retire by 35
  • I offered to give a friend a (free) crash course in investing because she was disappointed with an investing course she took
  • My partner and I helped one of his family members understand a budgeting software we use
  • A family member and a few friends joined Ally for their High Yield Savings Account at my recommendation
  • My partner and I discussed investing options to save for their child with another family member
  • I came up with a retirement plan for a few family members – we’ll see if they follow it 🙂
  • I had funny interactions like this:

Travel Planning

Travel planning this year came in spurts. I meant to just “window shop” and before I know it, it’s been 4 hours and I’ve planned the following 7 months. Oops! I’m going to see if I can have a more measured approach in 2023, but then again if the inspiration strikes me all at once, I will do it again since it was nice to just get everything set up in one session and then just be present where I am.

Nomad Living

My nomad life continues to include growth and embarrassing myself 99% of the time 🙂 . This year obviously included moving to new countries for the first time, which always involves me not knowing how everything works despite all my preparation.

This year also included my first solo international nomad exploration in Argentina. As for packing, I’m still culling what I bring with me after realizing I haven’t used a piece of clothing or technology in a few months. I’m starting to suspect that nomad packing is a constantly evolving project based on my surroundings and needs.

I also had fun listing out My Favorite Nomad Tools in case it helps my fellow travelers. I also seem to continue getting better at traveling all the time. The time I need to be comfortable in a new space keeps decreasing 🙂 .

Retirement

I took some time to reflect on my retirement this year in these posts:

Overall my retirement is still going better than I expected in every aspect: money, productivity, fitness and health. Being retired is also a skill I’m improving one year at a time 🙂 .

Other Skills

I was going to expand on all of the skills I learned this year, but then I realized if I did that, this post would be the length of a novel, so in no particular order, here are some of the other things I learned and improved on this year:

  • Photography
  • Hair dying
  • Cooking
  • Learning simple Thai
  • House/Baby/Catsitting
  • Jigsaw puzzles

Community

Socializing

I have been more social in 2022 than any other year on record – which maybe says something about how much of a tired hermit I was while working and obviously during a pandemic. However, I think that because I’m now retired and can recharge during the hours I would usually be working and draining my introverted reserves, that I now have way more energy to engage with people.

In addition to countless wonderful virtual hangouts, we have also started traveling the country, which has put us in close proximity to many of our loved ones (intentionally). So here’s a sampling of the social times I had this year:

  • I saw family and friends around the US as well as in Thailand and Argentina
  • I hung out with We Want Guac in New Hampshire, Angela from Tread Lightly Retire Early and Felicity from Fetching Financial Freedom in Seattle and also I met up with readers of this blog at their request in Seattle
  • I continued my weekly calls with my ex-college roommate who lives in Argentina and obviously saw her for the month of November!
  • I continued my weekly virtual movie nights with my former college suitemates, which has been fun. We rotate who picks the film and at times just postpone the movie to talk shit instead 🙂
  • I continued having weekly virtual TV show viewings and chats with my Mom, but now they’re in Spanish!

TRAVEL

This year I traveled to the below places:

USA

Source

International

And I had these new travel experiences (I’ve included links to my Insta reviews of them):

This year’s travel adventures included 11 planes, 9 trains and 2 rental cars as well as innumerable taxis and rideshares, such as with the new (to me) companies Grab and Cabify. Phew! It looks like a lot when I list it all out 🙂 . I’m excited to see where my adventures take me in 2023.

WATCHED

So, I absolutely love film. In fact, I wanted to be a film major, but that wasn’t ‘liberal arts’ enough for my college, so I ended up just taking all the classes I could on the subject and declaring myself another major. So I suspected that I would be watching films constantly in retirement – that didn’t turn out to be the case.

In fact, most of these films only happened because I was watching them with others, such as the weekly movie club I mentioned. This year, that included watching Westworld Season 4 (which will sadly be the final season) and that show always leads to hours of research and speculation after – it’s basically a book club for a wild show 🙂 .

Anyway, this list is way shorter than I expected given that I have unlimited time – maybe I need to focus more on watching TV and movies next year 😉 . If you’re interested in following along with what I’m watching and how I rate these films, feel free to check out my Letterboxd profile here.

Movies

This year I watched 139 movies. Here is a list of all the movies I saw this year and below are my Insta mini-reviews of my top films of 2022:

And here are my honorable mentions for 2022:

  1. Bodies Bodies Bodies
  2. The Batman
  3. Last Night In Soho
  4. Top Gun: Maverick

TV Shows

Below is a list of all the shows I saw this year, but if I had to choose only one – this was my favorite show that I saw in 2022:

  • Our Flag Means Death S1
  • Pacific Rim: The Black S2
  • Wandavision
  • Severance S1
  • Barry S1-S3
  • Westworld S4
  • Arcane S1
  • Derry Girls S1-S3
  • Schitt’s Creek S2-S6
  • Top Chef S19
  • Last Chance Kitchen S19
  • 600 lb life
  • Darcey & Stacey S3
  • Catfish S8
  • Murderville
  • Catfish UK
  • A Black Lady Sketch Show S1-S3
  • Bridgerton S1
  • Succession S1
  • What We Do In The Shadows S4
  • Only Murders In The Building S2
  • First Kill S1
  • Moon Knight
  • Always Sunny S1-S5
  • Ted Lasso S1-S2
  • What We Do In The Shadows S1-3
  • Don’t Trust The B In Apt 23 S1

YouTube

A few years ago, I started getting really into YouTube. Below is a list of my channel obsessions this year. I also thought it would be fun to include my favorite videos from my top 4 without context 🙂 . Enjoy!

Media

Education

Film

Comedy

Anti-MLM/Scams

READING

This year I accepted the default Goodreads goal of reading 52 books in 2022. However, I easily finished that goal in July:

Instead, in 2022 I read 87 fiction books, 13 non-fiction books and approximately 100 million fanfics for a total of 100 published books in 2022! A list of all the published books I’ve read this year can be found here and feel free to check out my Goodreads account here if you want to keep up with what I’m currently reading and how I rate those books. And here are my favorite books that I read this year in no particular order:

Fiction

  1. Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
  2. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
  3. The Guest List by Lucy Foley
  4. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
  5. Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis
  6. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Non-Fiction

  1. Think Again by Adam Grant
  2. Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner
  3. Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away by Julien Saunders & Kiersten Saunders
  4. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen

PLAYED

This year included me finding a new video game obsession: Cities Skylines!!!

I also of course continued my obsession with the Sims 4 with an additional boon: my new laptop can handle the behemoth of a game. Uh oh! There goes my productivity 🙂 .

There was also one more edition to my video game roster this year: Jurassic World Evolution. It’s basically Sim City, but with dinosaurs that eat people, which was fun but stressful. My dinosaurs kept eating my customers no matter what I did – it’s almost like a dinosaur amusement park is a bad idea 😉 .

PODCASTS

I listened to fewer podcasts this year than I have previously, but here were my favorites:

Comedy/TV

This podcast changed my life 🙂 . It’s the only podcast whose release date I’ve ever put as a repeat appointment on my calendar. I look forward to each new episodes every week and plan my day to include watching the YouTube version. It’s both hilarious and poignant. Here’s a random example:

Horror/Film

Finance

Finanzas en Español

LISTENED

This year I’ve been taking full advantage of Spotify Premium’s new music features, specifically Discover Weekly, Daily Mixes, and Release Radar. I listen to the whole 1.5 hours of Discover Weekly every Monday and Release Radar every Friday. It’s exposed me to so much new music that I never knew existed while helping to regulate my moods and I’m loving it 🙂 .

I listened to over 66,712 minutes of music in 2022, which was in line with previous retired years (29K in 2019, 71K in 2020, 84K in 2021) and apparently more than 95% of people in the US listened to. As a result, I found even more new artists and albums that made my heart sing. If you’re interested in more stats, in 2022 I listened to 2,608 artists and explored 41 genres. Here’s the best music I found this year:

Soundtracks & Scores

I love film soundtracks and original scores, so here are the songs from film and TV that I couldn’t get out of my head:

Artists

Here are the new artists I’ve become obsessed with this year:

Songs

These are my favorite songs that I listened to in 2022:

Running Playlist

This year my music tastes also shifted a bit to find music that keeps me pumped while running. Here are a few that made me push extra hard:

The Purple Grammys

At times I give out awards, the prize of which is my unending gratitude…what a great prize 🙂 .

Best Music Video

This is the best music video I discovered this year, though it’s actually a scene from RRR that they also released as a music video:

Conclusion

So that’s everything I got up to during 2022 🙂 . I’m still curious, still growing as a person and still finding new things to love and become obsessed with. In essence, life just keeps getting better. Let’s see what happens in 2023. Thank you for being here 🙂 .

How was your year? Did you accomplish your goals?

18 thoughts on “The Year Of Spanish: 2022 Goals & Accomplishments”

  1. Thank you Purple for continuing to write weekly. I look forward to your blog every Tuesday. Some of us have to live vicariously through your blog due to life commitments and we appreciate your efforts.

    Reply

    1. Thank you for reading 🙂 ! And that’s so kind to say – I look forward to post days as well since I get to hear from y’all. Thank you for being here!

      Reply

  3. Holy cow! I was reading this and kept thinking to myself, “no way she has done anything more (or at least tracked anything else)”, and more content kept coming haha! Congrats!
    I have some good recommendations now for entertainment. And I am so mad at myself that I did not know there was an Always Sunny Podcast! That is definitely on my list now.

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    1. Hahaha this is actually 25% shorter than last year’s accomplishment’s post – I was restraining myself 😉 . Thank you! So happy to help with the entertainment and YES the Sunny Podcast is such a bright light in the world. I hope you enjoy it.

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      1. 25%, wow! I might send a follow up comment on my thoughts on the podcast, but I do not see how I will not like it. I have probably seen each episode of Its Always Sunny 3 or 4 times . . . 😐

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  4. Congratulations! That is a lot of accomplishments for a year. How did you have time to work? I’ve had your blog bookmarked for a few years and read the occasional article, but I got started again a couple weeks ago and have binged a bit on articles. I’ve really enjoyed reading your story and posts and plan to keep up with new articles. Thank you for your work on the blog. I’m a mostly retired (but not really early) attorney who is also trying to learn Spanish (my wife is Mexican and we spend winters with her family now). Haste la proxima.

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    1. Thank you! As for how I had time to work – that’s easy: I didn’t have time for any of these things 🙂 . And oh wow – that’s so cool to hear it’s binge-worthy! I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying it. Good luck with your Spanish!! You’ve got this. Hasta la próxima!

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  5. Congratulations! I especially liked the addition of the YouTube channels, and was pleased to see “Savvy writes books” on it. Love her! I will definitely check out your other YouTube, books and movie recommendations.

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    1. Thank you! And yeah I’ve been watching a lot more YouTube these last few years and look forward to new uploads like I used to look forward to TV shows so I thought it would be good to include. And yeah Savy is the best!! Let me know what you think about the other recommendations – I hope you enjoy them 🙂 .

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  6. This post eptiomises the notion that retired people are too busy to work 😉 excellent! What a great year! All that description about your easy sleep is jealousy-inducing, damn. You must look and feel so better.

    My goals for the year: I write them out at the start of each year, and actually, I’ve accomplished all but two of them! Which is awesome 🙂 despite some pretty awful downs, it’s been a good year for accomplishments.

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    1. Haha seriously. Getting good sleep really is a wild difference 🙂 . Congratulations on making two of your goals!! That’s amazing – and more than I often did while working 😉 .

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  7. One goal I have every single year is to learn spanish and every single year I fail at that goal. I took a few years of Spanish in college and was pretty good at it but never followed through. perhaps 2023 is the year I fix that.

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    1. Totally – 2023 is the year! You’ve got this 🙂 . Also I have a post coming out tomorrow detailing how I became fluent in Spanish this year in case that helps.

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  8. Totally into this list! What a great year. I’ve loved following along every week, thanks for putting in the effort to post & spreading that joy around.

    Btw, I also read (and loved) The Guest List and totally agree that it’s the best murder mystery I’ve ever read (so far). I tried to listen to the next book of hers but ironically, knowing what a good job she did with The Guest List gave me too much anxiety to be able to get into it!! Haha.

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    1. I do love a good list 🙂 . And thank you so much for saying that CG – I really do appreciate it so much. And RIGHT?!?! That book blew my mind. And yeah it’s almost impossible to capture lightning in a bottle twice so I lower my expectations a bit when reading an author’s other works. It’s still very enjoyable for me though.

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