Hi everyone,

Welcome back to the end-of-year edition of The Retrospect. I want to thank each of you for being involved with this newsletter in some way. Whether you're subscribed, reading each edition, or just lurking, thank you for choosing to stay in the loop. I hope you're all doing well and ending the year with rest and rejuvenation.

I'm looking forward to all that 2023 has to offer. If it's been a minute since we last spoke, don't hesitate to reach out and catch up — I'll be doing the same. Let's see who does it first!

My Favorite Content

In 2019, I began an annual review, as suggested by Ali Abdaal, to reflect on the year as a whole. Each year, the review takes a slightly different form but generally involves writing about my experiences, feelings, milestones, and learnings, as well as the people who have impacted me. Here is an excerpt from my 2020 review:

I enjoyed several pieces of content this year, including:

• 📚New York 2140, a science fiction novel set in a future where rising sea levels have partially submerged New York City. It provides thought-provoking commentary on morality, fairness, and capitalism while being an enjoyable story.
• 🎧Arseblog 20, a mini-series by Arseblog, an Arsenal podcast. It covers the last 20 years of Arsenal's history in around 12 hours, which has been great for me as a fan since 2012.
• 📺The Wilds, a TV show on Amazon Prime. It follows teenage girls stranded on an island, unknowingly participating in a social experiment. I was surprised to enjoy it, as it offers insightful commentary on social pressures and stereotypes.
• 🎶Montell Fish, Asake, and Stromae are three artists I couldn't stop listening to at various points this year. Montell Fish during my last few quarters at Stanford, Asake during first few months in LA, and Stromae during this holiday season. They evoke strong emotions and memories, and I look forward to discovering more music in 2021.

Introducing Fostering Our Earth🌍

We are experiencing an abnormal polar vortex, causing record-low temperatures across much of the country. This summer has been characterized by heat waves and record highs. Our changing climate, evidenced by more extreme weather, will lead to an uninhabitable earth for future generations. We need to mobilize as a society toward improving our planet; we cannot afford to slow down. To do this effectively, I believe we must understand the world around us as is and the complex interactions between the various systems. For example, I believe that if we cannot understand the need to provide a livable wage and universal healthcare and its impacts on addressing homelessness, then when the next extreme event happens, we will be left scrambling, or at worst, forgetting about the most marginalized members of our society, leaving them to suffer. I believe that if we can understand that a car-free world is not only safer for us immediately but can lead to prolonging our earth and societies, then we'd be more in favor of policies or candidates that do this. We can effectively mobilize toward a better, more sustainable future through compassion, exploration, and connection-building. This is why I am launching Fostering Our Earth — to explore climate, sustainability, and people.

Fostering Our Earth is a space for untangling complex systems and defining a collaborative culture with each other and the world around us. This newsletter will explore aspects of a sustainable future through bit-sized newsletters and TikToks, medium-length YouTube videos, and longer-form interview podcasts with practitioners.

I am excited to build this community, and I invite you all to subscribe to the journey here and please share with this anyone who may be interested! Don't worry; The Retrospect isn't going anywhere! This will remain my space for personal reflections and updates (much like this)!

Thanks for reading and reflecting this week! If you aren't subscribed to get this in your inbox weekly, you can here!

Best,
Awoe ✌🏾