2021 Review — Myriad Misadventures

At the end of 2020 I wrote a post about my goals for 2021. I’m going to do that again for 2022 but first let’s review how 2021 went. I’m going to look at travel, martial arts, and social media.

First up is travel. Travel went more or less as expected. China still has some of the strictest border controls of any large country in the world because of COVID so international travel was off the table. I was hoping for some domestic travel but wasn’t sure how it would pan out. Chinese New Year vacation didn’t have much. LOTS of people travel, mostly to go home and visit family, during Chinese New Year and that helped spread COVID early in 2020 so as the holiday rolled around in 2021 it was suggested, strongly, that we not go anywhere. We did a short staycation at a nice hotel in Shenzhen but that was it.

Summer was a little better. Since most people have to work during the summer it’s a much slower (although certainly not slow) travel season than Chinese New Year. We had planned to go on a couple of trips but really only managed one. We ventured to next door Guangxi Province for a pretty good trip to Beihai and Weizhou Island. Since we’d done almost no traveling at all since early 2020 is was a necessary trip. We’d thought about Shanghai but weren’t happy with the prices so Guangxi ended up being our only real trip. We also went out to Xichong beach for a couple days but that was pretty short and technically a part of Shenzhen, although it was good to get out of the city proper.

It definitely wasn’t what I was hoping for, considering the trips we managed to take before COVID, but all things considered it was probably the best we could have hoped for. And if you want to read a little more about those summer trips check out these blog posts.

Next up is martial arts. Martial arts were kind of a mixed bad to be honest. I started the year going to JKD, wing chun, and tai chi classes. I was riding high on getting back to classes into 2020. I couldn’t sustain it though. The days were incredibly long if I had both work and class, and since I was going to the gym in the afternoon too I was getting increasingly burnt out. It started to fall apart when my wing chun class moved locations in the spring. In addition to the location change the time changed from 7:30-9 to 8:30-10 and I just couldn’t swing that time. I was also starting to cook my own food more to try to see better results in the gym which required a lot more prep time after work and there was no way to fit it all in.

Tai chi worked out for a little longer. Class was close and still a little earlier and I managed to twist my schedule around so that I usually had time to get everything done on Thursday, when I had the class. But that too fell apart. Tai chi class requires five people to go to class or the class gets cancelled. If only four people can go then there’s no class. Since most of the class seems to be parents and they have their kids during summer break not enough people could usually get to class. So tai chi class got postponed until summer ended. Unfortunately when fall rolled around the evening tai chi class had been cancelled and replaced with another morning class. I work in the morning so that meant no tai chi class.

JKD worked out the longest. I had started JKD first and class was on Saturday so I could usually go. But around November I got caught up in looking for a new job and just didn’t have the energy for anything. So towards the end of the year I wasn’t going to JKD either. That meant no classes at all. I wrote a little about my struggle here.

Although the year started out strong for my martial arts classes I started to lose them little by little. I’d like to say they’re all definitely coming back but I don’t see my schedule getting notably better anytime soon and letting me get back to class. JKD is the exception since it’s on the weekend. I should be able to start back up there soon.

Getting my makeup for ‘Justice Delivery’ done by @niharika.sabnani_mua. Photo by @gaily_zeng

Last is social media. It’s pretty tedious to be honest but an important part of running a blog. And it was not a great year for my social media pages. Fight videos are the most exciting part and they struggled a little this year. I had pretty high hopes going into the year. I was working on the Rey Mafan fights and SJ and I were gearing up to finally film what was supposed to be our first fight video before getting delayed. Early in the year I also started working on the fight that became ‘Justice Delivery.’ But like with so much else it started to fizzle by the end of the year. I already don’t know too many people interested in filming and a couple people moved. Plus it’s always hard to try to juggle everyone’s schedule. Since we all work full time it’s tough to find time when we can meet up to practice and even harder to find time to film once we’re ready. It was tough to watch the early momentum fizzle by summer for the second year in a row.

The individual pages were a mixed bag. Starting with photos, Instagram grew steadily but very slowly, although I suppose slow growth is better than no growth. I also definitely think I’ve found my rhythm on Instagram with two weeks of travel photos followed by a week of martial arts photos. Xiaohongshu (which means little red book), the site where I’m posting the photos I post on Instagram, hasn’t done great. That’s not too surprising considering that Xiaohongshu is largely a lifestyle app for women. There are certainly men there and people who post other things, like martial arts, working out, and anime, but makeup, outfits of the day, and fashion seem to be much bigger. There’s a decent sized niche for travel I think but my very limited Chinese makes it hard to tap into.

Short videos were definitely a let down. TikTok has gone nowhere. My videos did well when I started it in 2019, and I had some videos do really well a bit later but in the last almost two years it’s gone nowhere. The last couple months of 2021 were particularly bad. I need to do something to change it up but I don’t know what. Douyin, the Chinese app where I upload my TikTok videos, did better. The videos have continued to do well but none of the videos in 2021 did incredibly well like some viral videos did in 2020. Those videos got me tens of thousands of followers. Even though I had some popular videos in 2021 they failed to replicate that success. I did get into a good groove with the short videos this year though. A new video, a repurposed old video, and a martial arts video every week. I’d like at least two new videos a week, and maybe four total a week, but I haven’t been able to film or edit enough for that.

Long videos were tough. I was consistent with YouTube earlier in the year but as is often the case once the fall semester started I started to get less consistent. They also haven’t done well. I had some success early in 2020 with COVID vlogs before the disease had spread widely and hoped that that would start an upward trend but it didn’t. And I didn’t get anywhere in 2021. I’m clearly missing something with those videos. That something to stand out. I saw a little more success on Bilibili, which is the Chinese site where I upload my YouTube videos. In 2021 I started uploading them with Chinese subtitles, which was definitely what was missing when I started. I definitely think there’s potential on that site but since I need to pay and wait for them to get subtitled it usually takes longer for each video to be ready to upload. As such I was very inconsistent with posting this year and that’s holding me back I think.

I also ran into a snag with all the social media around November. I mentioned above that I was pretty seriously looking for a new job and I didn’t post anything for the better part of a month. I think that set be back quite a bit. I’m back to posting now but I don’t think I’ve quite made up for all that lost ground yet.

Considering the strides I’d made in 2020 I had pretty high hopes going into 2021. Unfortunately they didn’t pan out quite the way I’d hoped. It wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a bad year, but it definitely wasn’t what I wanted.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you on my next trip. Don't forget to click the links below and follow to stay up to date on what I'm doing and where I am and to see all the pictures and videos from my trips.