It's that time of year again! The perfect time to reflect on the past, take stock of what has been accomplished, and plan again for the future ahead. I hope you all have been doing well!
2021 almost felt like a repeat of 2020, with continued covid regulations, strange work hours, and the media basically repeating itself over and over whenever a new "variant" pops up, trying to inject every last drop of fear they can into the populace about rising infection rates or whatever. As Elliot Carver once said, "There's no news like bad news!" For the most part, I avoided news altogether this year, which really helped me a lot! If I wanted to know what was actually happening in some part of the world, I did my own research, and got the whole story (Without bias). That's all I'll say on that, let's move on to interesting things!
TLDR:
►I wrote another book!
►BRACE Design launched its first watch!
►The supply chain disruptions are very real
►This year seemed like a lot of waiting
Following the high of writing and publishing my first book: Contrast (which I'm actively working on a second
edition!) I eagerly dove into my next book idea: "Idioms for Entrepreneurs, 100 sayings, quotes, and proverbs for budding entrepreneurs".
"Idioms" practically wrote itself over the course of March, (which coincidentally was when I was back to working covid swing shifts) and after sitting on the manuscript, I finalized it in mid-November. It is essentially a compendium of all the random sayings, positive quotes, and uplifting things I keep telling myself through my long journey to entrepreneurial success. I just want to share them with others and hope they can help them along as well.
As for BRACE Design, after years of research, dozens of prototypes, numerous full redesigns, and lots and lots of learning, I was beyond excited to launch BRACE Design's first commercial watch, the ACR-100. And I couldn't be more excited with the support and response I've gotten from it. The first batch was very small (only 6 units) and they have all been taken in by loving owners. It hasn't been the perfect launch cycle either, but the owners have been very gracious while I've ironed out the details, and they have been left with a superior product.
The momentum from this launch has spurred me to design many more watches, of which several variants will be released in 2022, and I will continue my watchmaking endeavor long into the future, which is good because...
...Supply chain issues! So much of this year has felt wasted while waiting on things, and it has cancelled/postponed many other plans. The speed at which I can iterate on watch designs has essentially halved, as the subcontracted portions of the watch cases have doubled their lead times. I would make more components myself, but the funding for the machines necessary is lacking.
Additionally, I was planning on building a custom house this summer, and I had contractors and banks and everything lined out. Suddenly the price of lumber was EIGHT TIMES what it was, and the price of concrete QUADRUPLED! Not to mention that the housing/land market seems to be on an exponential curve. So, I ended up scrapping that project, as spending $500K for a $300K house seemed a little extreme. Who knows if that project will ever materialize or not?
To me, 2021 seemed like a lot of "hurry up and wait." There was a lot of short bursts of action that had long waiting intervals in between. The ball is never rolling fast enough for my tastes, but my shotgun approach to activities doesn't help much either (I am devising a scheduling method that has been helping me, which I will elaborate on later).
I also wasn't able to make as many Youtube build videos as I wanted, but my favorite one for the year has to be "How to make a unique hammer." The channel is still small, but grew relatively well this year. I also wasn't able to be as active here on this blog as I wanted, but one of my posts did somehow get a ridiculously massive boost from Reddit, which was cool. I might also start to make more video game related posts, as that is a large area of interest for me.
As usual, I have big plans for 2022, and I'm optimistic that it will be a good and productive year. We're only graced with so many years on this rock, and I want to accomplish as much as possible, while still keeping a stable foundation (which seems mutually exclusive at times), and I hope that you can do the same.
Stay safe. Have fun. Be creative.
-Jeremy
