2021 Summary — Level 32

5 min readFeb 13, 2022

The semi-nomadic year

I broke off from my long term relationship
5 month @Ankara, in a peaceful family farm house with natural food and natural way of living
1 month @Antalya, together with Cem. Had fun talking about game design, game development, various techs
3 weeks @Gebze, stayed at my aunt’s house
0.5 week @Alacati, together with my cousin, a short second holiday
2 months @Istanbul, meeting a lot of family members, friends, acquaintances
1 week at @Furkan, had fun talking about Ultima Online, game design, tech, cryptocurrencies
1 month @Belgrade/Serbia, together with Furkan. This was the first post communism country I’ve been to and it was full of new insights and new friends
After Serbia, came back to Toronto and settled down in a new condo near downtown
I got rejected from 2 condos because they didn’t understand what my business is, what I am working on, how I am making money, why I am in Toronto if I’m working remotely. The 3rd condo was accepted because the realtor representing the house turned out to be a Colonist player. Our interview for the house was not about if I use drugs or had pets, instead we talked about colonist business model, culture, problems, future roadmap

Health

Lockdowns broke habits like gym and eating healthy. This year I made my way back to health. I’m in the best shape of my life
I’ve reached 75kg which is my lowest weight
I moved from intermittent fasting to one meal a day. Life is so much simpler and work is more productive
I slowly transitioned into a deeper Keto/Paleo diet, removing all processed food from my diet. I basically just ate meat, fruit, vegetable, nuts (Exception: Incredible restaurants)
On my last day before Turkey I decided to break my diet and go full in on local carbs, snacks, desserts. I’ve became sick for the first time in last few years and felt like shit for 2 weeks after that. Never again..
I started grounding, which is trying to touch the earth with our bare skin. It definitely improved my ability to fall asleep
I started taking super hot burning showers and in the last 15 seconds changed it to cold showers. The shock gives me an energy boost
Best purchase: Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress. The bed tracks my sleep and gives me the exact tempature I need for a good night’s sleep

Hired 3 more outstanding people to the team
Fixed a lot of infrastructure issues we had and socket related problems players experienced
Worked on setting up automatic processes and cleaning up the codebase
More details here: https://blog.colonist.io/colonist-io-2021-summary/

I sadly did not have a chance to play as much video games as I hoped to
I played an embarrassing amount of Raid Shadow Legends. It’s a pay to win game, so I paid and I won. I reached Platinum arena which is the top 100 worldwide players at one point. I do not recommend this game
Played a lot of Puzzle Forge 2, which App Store recommends to Dawn of Crafting players. If you like crafting games I recommend this
Played a bit Antiyoy, recommended by Erdem
Played a bit Archero, recommended by Furkan
Played a bit Age of Empires: DE and Age of Empires 2: DE
Played a bit of Heroes of Might & Magic 3 HD

Finished watching Star Trek The Next Generation, it is one of the best shows ever made in every sense. It gives a lot of insight into humanity, who we are, what our values are, why we are here, the impacts of choices and morality. It provokes a lot of philosophical thoughts. I find myself youtubing some of the conversations they have. Whether it is business or life, I start going back to TNG for inspiration and thoughts. I used to be a Star Wars person, now I’m not so sure..
Watched Arcane. It is not a netflix show, it is not an anime. It is the perfect MMORPG ad. Every element put in there is done to introduce the world we’re going to play in, items, powers, quest givers. 1st episode was one of the worst anime 1st episode I’ve watched. But it was the best MMORPG ad first episode, because it introduces the world, items and events perfectly
Squid Game was fun, but I think it is overhyped. Sword Art Online s1 was better
I’ve watched a few anime like Saiki K and Erased
I watched Witcher, I just wish I had time to play the video games too
Rented a BMW M4 while going to Alacati and I must say the pay to win game on highways is extremely fun. I didn’t have much interest in cars, but doubling the speed of all other cars and passing them gets the blood boiling. I plan on doing this every year and slowly upgrading my rented cars. I still have no desire to buy a car

Instead of reading/listening to books I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts and youtube videos this year
Best recommended podcast: Naval. Some episodes are so thought provoking that I had to listen a few times
Best recommended youtube channel: Dr. Berg. I’ve studied and learned a lot more about health this year
Best recommended MMO youtuber: Josh. After Lazypeon, Asmongold, Fevir, a welcome addition to the MMO space
Best recommended book: Fooled by Randomness. It teaches how luck has a larger impact in everything than we believe.
Best recommended tool: Todoist. I had this recommended to me for 1–2 years and I resisted using it. But now that I finally got into it, I’m really liking and keeping all my todos inside it
I dived down deeper and studied more ancient greek philosophy
Oh and I watched a lot of youtubers/streamers play video games and their opinions and thoughts about games
Studied Metaverse and NFT. Decided they weren’t worth pursuing
Studied human relationships and realized we’re doomed from both sides of desire

Goals are lame, they’re rarely fulfilled. So my goal is to just try my best to have fun, do things I like to do, keep away from things I don’t like to do
“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.” — Seneca. I am going to continue on learning how to live
For Colonist, we actually have some goals: 2x team size, 4x revenue