2021
A look back at 2020 Part 2
2021 did not feel like a standalone year. It felt more like an extension of 2020. The same stories, extended like a drawn-out soap opera — year two of humanity versus the pandemic. Vaccinations offered a welcome respite, but new variants attack with a vengeance. We continued to stay at home, work from home, do everything from home. Yet another year of cancelled plans. This year proved that 2020 was not an anomaly, that the world will never be the same again post-pandemic.
And what a truly strange year it was. I like to say that the 2010s was the decade when video games were becoming more like real life, while the 2020s is the decade when real life becomes more like a video game. We saw the rise of meme stocks and meme tokens. The traditional notion of value is turning on its head, making way for the likes of Gamestop and Shiba Inu.
Nowhere is this memeification of the world more apparent than in NFTs or non-fungible tokens. This year saw the $69 million sale of a JPEG, the emergence of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and the meteoric rise of play-to-earn NFT game Axie Infinity. We saw asset prices in this space go berserk, many by multiples of 100 or more. Like what venture capitalist Chris Dixon proclaimed, “The next big thing will start out looking like a toy.” ‘Metaverse’ became the buzzword of the year, and big tech companies started rallying themselves to chase this new trend.
Why am I narrating all these as I reflect on 2021? For better or for worse, crypto took up most of my mindspace this year. I spent ungodly amounts of time checking Twitter threads, gorging podcasts, traversing Discord chatrooms, monitoring prices, bidding on overpriced JPEGs, and engaging in late-night conversations with my brother who is even more into this than I am. I suspect this ‘degen’ behavior got more common this past year because we remain cooped up in our homes, looking to make life a little more thrilling. Most of us still cannot travel to Disneyland, so we let our money take the roller coaster rides on our behalf.
At the end of the day, I surmise that we are all just finding different ways to distract ourselves from everything that is going on in the world. This is mine. You probably have yours. I did my best to progress in the ‘real’ life milestones as well, like taking up weightlifting seriously for the first time, completing an online specialization in product management, and making a career transition from finance to education.
Despite all these, I felt perpetually distracted this year, like I lost the ability to focus for more than a few minutes at a time. My brain is like a haywire web browser that keeps opening new tabs over and over, chasing after every shiny new hyperlink until the system memory cannot handle it anymore. I still did my best to complete some books this year, but the only way I could do that is through Audible. Heck, I lost count of how many times I jumped on to Twitter and Instagram while writing this piece. It is now close to midnight, so it is taking every ounce of my willpower to not succumb to the temptations of social media and check out everyone’s mandatory new year posts.
The other day, I was in the middle of a stroll at East Coast Park with Hyejoo when my phone beeped with a low-battery notification. Down to 3%. I had forgotten to charge my phone that day. We were far from home and her phone battery was also dying. I knew that I had to conserve every drop of battery I had left.
Minutes later, I caught myself grabbing my phone, my fingers inching their way to refresh my Twitter feed out of impulse. The orange sky beckoned at us. It took resolve for me not to pick up my phone and take a photo. Stop, just enjoy the moment. Take it in, no need to record it.
We continued to walk, past the trees, the sea, past the running children and the old men trying to catch fish. Untethered from my phone, a strange thing happened. I started to see more and hear more. The sound of the waves crashing the rocks, the smell of grass after the rain, the December tropical breeze. Hyejoo and I just talked. We recounted the little fragile choices that led us to that moment, like her choosing to delay her study-abroad program by a year which led to us meeting in Shanghai as classmates the following year. We reminisced about how we were as kids — how she was easy to raise, how hard I was to feed when I was a kid until my mom discovered danggit in Palawan. It struck me that it had been almost two years since my last trip home — how dearly I missed seeing my family and friends in person. It was one of the most immersive conversations I remember having. No phone vibrations to puncture our moment, just us.
Somehow, everything just clicked that day. We stumbled upon a nice Thai restaurant without having to check whether it had five-star reviews on Google. We managed to find our way to the bus stop without GPS. We just surrendered ourselves to serendipity.
The bus ride back home was long. My first reaction was fear of boredom — how was I going to stand forty-five minutes without an article to read, a podcast to listen to, a game to play, or Youtube videos to watch? Her head leaned on my shoulder as we quietly watched the city streets go by. The night lights seemed to shine a little brighter. It hit me how rare it was, moments when we are totally offline, disconnected from screens that whisk our attention away. I got to remember life before the smartphone, those times when I just allowed my mind to wander, roam free, and dream.
There is a concept in design called white space — the area between the design elements that are just blank. I used to think that white space is wasted space — wouldn’t it be better to maximize the limited space with more interesting design elements? As I understood product design more though, I found that the opposite is true. Proper use of white space is actually better design. It allows the design to breathe.
That bus ride without my phone was a white space moment for me. It made me realize that I had no obligation to fill up every empty moment with activities to fill the time, that I should also give myself permission to be bored and just give in to the present. I aspire to have more of these white space moments in 2022, to give myself more time to connect the dots and see the patterns, to deduce hints from life and figure out where it takes me next. Here’s to the end of 2020 part 2 and the start of a less distracted and more focused 2022.
