For me, 2016 has been a beautiful year. I’ve gained a lot of new experiences—ones I’d only dared to think about in my dreams—and I’m sure FasterEFT has contributed a lot. In this post, I’d like to give a recap of the most important ones.

Cycling as a sport routine

As last year a bicycle lane was built between Debrecen and Mikepércs, when the weather is nice enough, I always go to Debrecen by bike, and I easily go about 2×11 km 2 or 3 times a week (11 km to the city and another 11 km back from it). Although now, during winter, I prefer taking a bus, I’m looking forward to ride a bike in spring again!

When I talked about this with others, they would often be surprised. The cause of the surprise was mainly coming from how long it takes to travel all this distance by bike. I think if one gets used to it step by step and he/she enjoys doing it, it doesn’t seem that much at all. One of my family members noted, “But it’ll get dark by the time you get home.” Well, since I had rarely ridden my bike in the evenings, having to go through a part of the road without any streetlights was a little unusual. But as I carry lights with me, I don’t need the whole road to be lit, only a few metres in front of me. (This is also true metaphorically: if I have a goal set, I don’t have to know exactly how I’m going to reach it, but only the next one or two steps.) To sum up, it’s good exercise, it doesn’t cost much, it protects the environment, and, best of all, it’s fun.

Getting closer to others

It’s been a month since I deleted my Facebook account. There are people who think it’s impossible to completely abandon this website. Others say that people who do so are antisocial. I’ve experienced the exact opposite of this in the past 30 days, which, taking into account that I’ve been pretty reserved for a long time, is a huge success for me.

As I’ve written in another post (How to use social media without harming your relationships), I don’t think social media by themselves can be a substitution for face-to-face communication. After leaving Facebook, I focussed more on spending my time with others offline, practising having conversations with them in person. I not only feel more comfortable and happier in such situations, but my conversational partners have become more verbose in return.

In addition, I’m more aware of who is really important to me. On Facebook, I’ve seen many people act in a way that is in sharp contrast to their real-life behaviour. (Which is not surprising, as it’s easy to misjudge somebody based on status updates and shared photos intended to create a good impression in others but failing to reflect what the author is really like.) I not only know better those who I spend time with in person extensively, but topics that outright annoy me when I see them on my newsfeed—posted by the same person—never come up during our conversations. Moreover, they also respect my decision of not being on Facebook and contact me through e-mail or phone.

And connecting with others in real life feels wonderful. At the same time I left Facebook, I started going to a Toastmasters club, and since not long ago I’ve been socialising with who I study together with while having drinks. These events, no matter how incredible it sounds, have never occurred to me before.

New job opportunities

Also, I’ve come across job opportunities that closely relate to some of my areas of interest (e.g. free/libre software) and people reached out to me to ask for help with FasterEFT who I had no idea were into something like this. What’s interesting is that, in the past, I used to look down on me for these very same areas of interest, because I believed I didn’t fit in and it was awkward if I was interested in things other people didn’t care about. To quote Cal Newport, “[i]n a capitalist economy, the market rewards things that are rare and valuable”. I suppose this is true not only from the point of view of finances and economy, but also from the point of view of emotions and spirituality. Put in another way, it’s important for us to follow our dreams and stand by everything you love doing with passion, because I think this is what makes us unique and this is what makes our inner self truly shine.

Conclusion

Exciting events have happened to me this year. Releasing my fears and holding on to what is valuable to me allowed me to practise a sport dear to me, become more social, and have new and interesting job opportunities. All this is owing to tapping with others and by myself. I’m looking forward to new changes to come in 2017!