2023

Hi, I have been gone for a while. A long while.

To be honest, since the last post, I’ve sat down many times and started writing or just thinking about all the things I want to express, but can’t quite get the words to do so.
I have this post in my head since December 2022, talking about meritocracy and apparent unfairness in our lives.
But for real, it is really hard to write about it without reaching some stupid conclusions.
So I decided to write about 2023 instead, just to make myself comfortable again expressing myself.

I know I should write about more important or interesting stuff than my life, I actually love talking about all the gray areas we have in life, like for example “I understand why you do this, but still I would never justify it”.
And I swear I will write about all that, I really want to know how people feel about this stuff, and for them to see how I think about it as well.
But for now, ok… my life.

My 2023 was surprisingly, the best year of my life.
After spending MANY years daydreaming about 2016 and all the good things that happened to me that year, 2023 came and said “Hold my purse bitch”.

Allow me to explain. I think the most important thing about making 2023 the best year was mainly attitude.
My attitude towards myself this year was impeccable.

I started 2023 alone in my kitchen, I cooked something nice and that was it. All alone.
I think it was great, because I started the year dealing with something I feared my whole life, loneliness. Cause I didn’t want to be alone that night, but I had to.
Cause I never wanted to be alone, but we all have to, eventually.
As I think I explained a year ago, 2022 was awful cause of the loneliness I felt, but 2023 was beautiful because I embraced that loneliness.
I learnt to be by myself. I finally defined myself for myself, without anyone else necessary to establish who I am.

As the first weeks of the year passed, nothing really happened and things were going OK, but somewhere around March I felt like I was starting to feel down, just out of nowhere I felt like I was losing myself again (If you know what I mean with that, I’m really sorry, and I hope you are better by now).
But this time something weird went through my mind, a thought like “Hey, just let it go”. And I know it sounds dumb, but as simple as that I let it go, and I felt better, I was better this time.
Some kind of feeling of power went through my body, and I just knew it was in my power to feel better, to be better.
I finally could be better for me, not for someone else or something else, but for me.

I decided to lose weight, because yes.
And I did so, I started eating healthier, doing exercise daily, and by June I had lost around 18Kg and became really passionate about jogging.

Uni went smooth from March to June, typical hard courses with stupidly hard topics and weird demonstrations for strange theorems that only crazy mathematicians use, just as smooth as it can go in MIPT.
But as June started I had my GOS (State Exams for all the courses in my Bachelor’s degree) coming up, so I started to panic.

I had the hardest and yet the most enjoyable month of exams in my life.
Together with 3 more friends we reunited every day in a classroom in University, and studied all day long, solving problems, sharing knowledge, sleeping in the desks, eating fast to go back to study.
Those were amazing 20 days, I spent full days in that classroom, some days I studied 24 hours nonstop and went home just to take a shower.
I swear, it was an amazing experience. But I never want to re-live that.

Photo taken at 3:37 am, shows pretty much how every student of MIPT feels during exams month.
Whoever this guy is, I get you bro.

As my exams passed I had just a few days before going back to Bolivia for vacations, this year was special, because I had to go to IOI in Szeged - Hungary in September, so my plan was to stay in Bolivia until IOI, and from Hungary going back to Russia (That plan failed, but it’s not really important for our story).
Back in Bolivia, I had a lot of things to think about and make some big decisions for my life.

I started by speaking to my parents and telling them that, I didn’t want to do a Master’s degree. And that went well!

So I continued my quest, and told an old and beloved friend I couldn’t stay in their life, as it was holding me back from moving on with my own life.

I kept going and made the decision that I want to go back to Bolivia, because every person I love lives there, and when the time comes and they have to leave, It will be alright.
Other options I had were to go to USA and find my way there, or going back to Argentina, were I feel I could be happy as well.

And finally, out of complete luck or something, I started the most serious relationship I ever had. Just like that.
It’s funny, I spent more than a year learning to be alone, to be a better person, and I spent the first months of my 2023 planning how to move on with my life after graduating. And all of the sudden, I found the person I think(I hope) will be my partner for life.
I must add, of course, it wasn’t out of nowhere, I had known her for more than a year by that point, and I was already pretty crazy about her, I just didn’t expect to fall for her this way.

My time in Bolivia was amazing, watching all my friends succeeding in their lives was simply beautiful.

My time in Szeged was also amazing, and therapeutic, I love IOI and Olympiads in Informatics, I dedicated big part of my time organizing them since 2019.
As I started my time at IOI, it felt like it was my first of many as Leader. I got the opportunity to get closer to this young guys, who trained so hard to be there, and I value very much the opportunity to have been there with them.
But as my time passed, it actually felt like a farewell. Like it was the universe(causality) giving me the chance to say goodbye to something I love so deeply.
I certainly hope to go back to IOI next year, but even if it was on my hands to decide so; I’m not sure whether I’m the right person for the job.
I will for sure talk about IOI in another post.

After my time in Szeged, I had to go back to Bolivia. To spend a few more days with my friends and family.
I threw a party with my closest friends, which I certainly enjoyed. And plan to repeat with even more people next year for my graduation.

And the goodbye, was just hard. Saying goodbye to my girlfriend, to my friends.
To go back to Russia, but this time without many of my close friends to rely on (As 3 of them left inadvertently, and one finished his degree).

But once back here, time just passed.
Nothing interesting happened between September and New Year’s (Besides Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer, of course).
I had so much free time, I started working on myself again, learning stuff by myself, reading a lot, playing GTA Online and RDR 2. But besides that, time flew all the way to this exact point in time. With me writing this.

I take 2023 as the best year of my life, because it was a year in which I took control of my own life, which is never easy.
Having control of your own life is hard, there are so many things you can’t control and will just mess with you. But this year I was lucky, and I was able to set a path I really want to follow.

2023 for me was way beyond all the good stuff, good stuff that I can encapsulate in just a few days of the year.
2023 was about ignoring the bad stuff, about keeping calm under stress, and making the hard decisions even when they hurt the most.
2023 was about making peace with the ghosts that I had let haunt me for years. And going back to those places that required revisiting, just to say GOODBYE.

I know it will be damn hard from here, but if it’s not hard it’s just not fun.
I have the right company, because if I learnt something this year. Is that:
With the right people, even when you’re alone, you are never alone.

As always, thanks for reading.

I hope you also had an amazing year.
Please take care.
Your friend, Diego Angulo.

Pd. It turns out, I will actually do a Master’s degree, but it’s because the stars aligned and I have the chance to do it online.