What happened?

Lots! We moved to a new house in the Live Oak area of Santa Cruz. I visited Zambia, Morocco, and Albania (passing through South Africa, Dubai, and Germany). I had a lot of projects through work that I feel proud of. Our two-year-old became a three-year-old. I got into soccer (NWSL/EPL). Anna got very into knitting and quilting. We took a couple lovely trips to Lake Tahoe and to Mendocino in the summer.

In the midst of all of that I also dealt with grief & loss, financial difficulty, deep political anxiety, heavy workloads and an ever-present lack of sleep. I anticipate all of these will appear again in the next year. Not trying to be pessimistic, but noting for myself that I experienced these hardships and still came out the other side feeling like it was overall a good year.

What media did I consume?

(Nom nom nom.)

Music

Bonny Light Horseman’s Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free is my album of the year. Also really loved Jessica Pratt’s Here in the Pitch, Khruangbin’s A La Sala, Soccer Mommy’s Evergreen, Adrianne Lenker’s Bright Future, Los Campesinos’ All Hell, The Decemberists’ As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, Waxahatchee’s Tiger Blood, Yasmin Williams’ Acadia, and Bon Iver’s SABLE, - EP, in no particular order. And… yes… Brat too. I have a favorites playlist here on Apple Music.

TV

Anna and I are absolutely freaking out over Silo right now, so I guess that’s my show of the year. I also really enjoyed Trying, though we haven’t finished the last season yet, and Bad Monkey, which was really fun.

Movies

I watched six movies released this year. My ratings are tied for first between Dune: Part Two and Wicked, both great movies. But I think I’d give the edge to Wicked for my favorite. I also really enjoyed Inside Out 2.

Games

I don’t think I played anything that released in 2024. But I did play a few older games: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Remastered, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Stray, most of Grim Fandango Remastered (until it soft locked me 😢), and just a smidgen of Red Dead Redemption 2. I don’t really have a ton of time to play games, and I have a massive backlog of purchases. Like most people I guess!

Did I meet my goals?

Yes and no:

Downsize ✅ - But we need to do it again!

Read a book each month ❌ - I failed this. But I did end up reading seven books and am on an eighth. Probably better than any other year of my life after high school!

Brush up on a language ❌ - I tried a few times, but couldn’t establish a routine. I ended up traveling through Germany this year and also attending a few Spanish-language events. In both instances, I was kicking myself for not learning these languages. There’s a possibility of both this year again, so I’m going to try and recommit to this.

Establish a workout rhythm ✅❌ - Going to put both a check and an X here because I did have a great routine, mostly through jogging and riding my bike to work. But this fall has been a really hard one mentally, so my desire to exercise has plummeted. But I know how good it feels now, so there’s hopefully less friction to get back into it.

Use public transit ❌ - The distance I live from work right now is a funny one. It’s about 10 minutes by car, 20 minutes by bike, and 30-40 minutes by bus. So bike or car tends to win out for this, as much as I’d like to kick my car dependency to the curb.

Unlock the power of Costco ❌ - We did do some meal planning for a bit that centered around Costco’s crazy good price for rotisserie chicken. Cut down on grocery cost a bit. But… there’s also so much there that’s tempting in the way of cheap clothes and snacks and crap. I don’t know if I’m disciplined enough to avoid spending a ton there on stuff I don’t need.

What are my goals for 2025?

Post a picture everyday

Over on Glass, a good amount of people will do photo-a-day challenges, where, for a full year, they take a photo and post it each day. I’ve heard from a few people that this starts as a good excuse to get out and walk about and stretch yourself photographically, but it turns into a burden. And you know what I need more of in my life? More burdens. So I’m going to try it out for a bit. If it sucks, it sucks and I’ll drop it.

Stick to Bullet Journaling

For Christmas I got the Leuchtturm 1917 Bullet Journal, which is hefty and beautiful and came with a sweet pen. I like handwriting notes, especially when I’m in a face-to-face meeting, and I like the tactile nature of it. BuJo as a philosophy interests me, especially the ability to expand and rework it to fit your own needs. It’s like the Notion of pen-and-paper note-taking systems. (What doesn’t interest me is the courses and books etc. offered by the company or by productivity influencers… but I get it. People gotta eat.)

Redesign my site

I hesitate putting this as a goal, because it’s really more of an inevitability. I updated my site in a lot of ways this past year, mostly in colors and fonts. But I’d like to do a rethink of the flow of the site, to be a bit more useful as a portfolio as well as a blog. I want it to be simple and beautiful, a way to showcase my images and video work just as well as my words. I think I can manage it, it’s more about finding the time!

Get back out there - running & biking

So I established jogging as a viable exercise routine last year. I also moved to a lovely area of town with plenty of quiet streets – much better than the busy mountain road we lived on a year ago. My goal for this year is to stick with it! I have a tentative desire to run in some kind of 5K/10K kind of thing, of which there are plenty in our area. We’ll see.

As for biking, I just love it. I have a 7 speed city bike and a pannier bag and everything. I have jealousy for e-bikes because there are a few big, unavoidable hills on my route. But I can do it, it’s all there in my legs! I just need to tap into it.

Budget for “me time”

This one is a bit wishy washy. I don’t know how I’m really going to go about it. But part of the reason I couldn’t read a book a month last year (other than my achingly slow reading speed) is that it’s hard to find the time for it. Between video editing/producing, doing dishes, washing laundry, dealing with our threenager, getting groceries, doing the dishes again, folding that laundry that’s been sitting there for a week, etc… it’s just hard.

And that’s that! We’ll see where I am a year from now when I write the next yearly update. ✌️

Christmas is a weird time of year for me. I flip flop between being excited/festive and being depressed/cynical. I think many feel the same. It can be an awful combination of high expenses, dreary weather, small talk with friends you once knew but can’t really connect with anymore, family members missed, and unspoken expectations that weren’t met. But at the same time, everything is bathed in twinkly lights, beautiful colors, warm music, big hugs, and so much to eat. High highs and low lows.

Maybe that’s why A Charlie Brown Christmas has such a cultural relevance, even at nearly sixty years old. This is not a new phenomenon, feeling left behind by the season. If Chuck can overcome it, I can too.