Tag: 2018

2018 by the numbers

I’d hoped to do a more qualitative analysis, but since January is almost over, here is a quick look at the numbers, mostly without comment. 

Travel

  • Miles flown: 74,052
  • Hotel nights: 51

I was on the road more this year than I have been in a while, mostly to SF and LA. 90% work related, with the major exception of a trip to Europe with Mom.

  • Ubers taken: 445

This is, frankly, shocking. More than one Uber per day??

Art/Media

  • Andrewdornon.com posts written: 14
  • Words written: 14,294

Would like both of the above to be higher, but I also published about the same volume professionally, so I’m relatively happy with my writing output.

  • Songs listened to: 1,731

This is frankly shocking because I listen to albums and songs on repeat a lot, maybe Spotify is counting individual listens?

  • Books read: 76 started and about 20 finished

This is lower than I wanted. I set out to start 10 books a week. Note: the library doesn’t keep a log of checkout records for privacy reasons, so this estimate based on times I picked email receipt and overdue notices.

  • Alamo Drafthouse Visits: 19
  • Master Pancake Shows: 6

The Alamo and especially Master Pancake are some of my favorite Austin institutions, so I’m happy with this. 

iPhone

  • Time spent on iPhone: 41 DAYS (2 hours and 45 minutes a day)
  • Time spent on texting: 12 DAYS
  • Time spent on Safari: 7.6 DAYS
  • Time spent on Mail: 6 DAYS
  • Time spent on Phone: 1.6 DAYS

I must say all of this is very worrisome/depressing, especially because I don’t have social media apps, turned off all notifications, and use Do Not Disturb and greyscale on my phone to combat overuse.

Money

Spend is as a percent of personal spend, not income.

  • Grocery spend: 7.9%
  • Amazon spend: 1.3%
  • Rent spend: 24.7%
  • Estimated Personal Restaurant and Bar spend: 13.7%

I’m estimating that half of my restaurant and bar spend is work related. 

  • Retirement savings as percent of gross income: 22.6%
  • Personal spend as percent of gross income: 54.8%

I didn’t have a savings or spending goal, so I’m fairly happy that autopilot did this well.

If you’d like to do similar analysis, I just pulled together data from Gmail, Mint, Personal Capital, the Screentime app, airlines/hotels and Spotify.

Top Albums 2018

I didn’t listen to a lot of new music this year, so the list is filled with stuff I couldn’t avoid hearing about and listening to and/or that reflects a generally backward-looking orientation to music. It was a year of 90s-2000s rap, Puccini and old red dirt country.

Roughly in order of hours listened:

DIME TRAP  — TI

It’s not the 90s again, but TI did some decent work, and “Wraith” is on repeat a lot.

Be The Cowboy  — Mitski

Apparently, this was everyone’s favorite album. And yeah, I agree.

Freak Yourself Out — Lake Street Dive

The only flaw is that there aren’t enough songs.

Golden Hour — Kacey Musgraves

Again, everyone loved this, and so did I.

Dancehall Dreamin’: A Tribute to Pat Green – Various

Hard to argue with a bunch of today’s Texas country stars playing covers of Pat Green songs.

Things Change – American Aquarium

The only thing that dings this album is the bandmembers keep changing and you can kind of tell.

Freak Yourself Out — Lake Street Dive

LSD is in fine form on this EP.

boygenius – boygenius (Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus)

Lady supergroup that includes Julien Baker, sign me up.

Hyperchromatica – Kyle Gann

Kyle’s trying to bring “microtonality into the mainstream”…not sure that is gonna happen, but this is palatable.