For the first time, I’m doing a year-in-review post. Last time, in Week­notes 2022 W52: Crisis, I opted not to, due to lack of time and energy, but this time, I started nice and early and spread the effort over a few weeks.

Where did I make progress this year?

First of all, I’ve given my mental health the attention it needs:

• I restarted psychotherapy. I did not realize how much I needed this until I got a new therapist.

• I drastically reduced my social media usage, which has been a net positive, but not without its struggles: I felt far more disconnected than before.

• I’ve stepped outside of my comfort zone much more than usual. The acting courses are proof of that.

• I’ve done daily journaling, with pen and paper, for the last nine months. That’s separate from writing my week­notes. Sometimes I call it journaling, and sometimes I call them “morning pages” — but it’s really a combination of both.

• I have much more of a daily rhythm now. The stability and predictability is useful.

All of this year, I’ve been exploring my creative side:

• I started the year taking singing and voice lessons. (That put me very much out of my comfort zone.)

• From there, I had the idea of picking up acting. I’ve completed four acting courses this year, and it has been immensely enjoyable. It’s been difficult nonetheless, and I have experienced plenty of setbacks, but I’ve not let that stop me.

• I’ve put time and energy into fiction writing. I wrote a handful of short stories and a short screenplay (my first screenplay ever!). What I’ve written isn’t the best, but I am making progressing. I’ve expanded fiction writing skills a ton.

I’ve also picked up reading books again. I have new physical books (novels) and eBook reader, which has been fantastic. I gave away a bunch of books I no longer needed, creating more space (for more books, maybe).

My food habits have shifted a little. I’ve reduced my caffeine intake, drinking coffee only twice a week or so, and switched from veganism to vegetarianism (still ~90% vegan though).

My web site has improved a good amount. There’s the new Contact page, the new Work page, a “night” theme, design improvements across the board, and bibliography integration. I updated my CV/Résumé, too. My site is starting to mature.

I wrote week­notes every single week, published one (just one) article: Avoiding bugs in Ruby code using the state pattern, and gave a talk at RUG::B, the Berlin Ruby user group.

I made progress with learning Spanish on Duolingo.

For me, however, the most important project this year was finalizing the purchase of my mom’s house. I now own a good fraction of a house! I had to empty my savings account and sell most of my investments, but it was 100% worth it.

Where did I not make much progress?

My mental health has been shaky this year. I ended the year with the worst burnout I’ve ever had, and I don’t know how to proceed from here. It’s not only my current employer; working in tech has had all the fun and meaning sucked out of it. At least I’ve got a therapist now.

Nanoc has fallen to the wayside a little bit. I still it use, of course, but I’ve not found the time or energy to work on reducing the backlog of issues and feature requests.

Some other side projects I’ve pretty much abandoned. The idea of writing a book on creating a programming language interpreter is still interesting, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get to it. The budgeting app prototype is also pretty much dead in the water.

I made an attempt at short-story writing challenge which I am not succeeding on. Maybe I’m just behind, but I don’t know whether I’ll finish it.

What other things did I do this year?

I traveled to Ghent and Bruges, Rome, Brighton and London. I cancelled the plans for a trip to Amsterdam. Traveling is fun and I’d like to do more of it. Plenty of destinations left in the world.

I purchased some new hardware: an iPhone (replacing my Android), a laser printer, a FitBit, a Thunderbolt dock, a new ultra-wide computer screen, and an SSD for my gaming PC. I’m happy with it all.

This year, I went to my first (and only) concert since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I also saw a fantastic dance performance, and watched the first stage play in many, many years.

What else happened this year?

I finally caught COVID-19. I suppose it was unavoidable. I went through it well with no lasting effects, though for quite a while, a horribly putrid smell followed me everywhere.

I also had heart surgery. It was my first, and hopefully my last.

I hit a few milestones: I’ve lived in Berlin for ten years now. Nanoc turned 16 this year, and so its inception is now closer to the invention of the World Wide Web than to the present day.

What was the best entertainment I consumed this year?

Books:

• House of Leaves.¹¹1 Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000).  There is so much to unpack in this book, and in my first (and only) reading I seem to have missed a ton. I’ll probably re-read it.

• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.²²2 Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Penguin Publishing Group, 2019).  This book also had a fantastic stage adaptation by Complicité, for which I traveled to Hamburg.

TV:

• Severance.³³3 Severance, directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle, written by Dan Erickson (Fifth Season, Red Hour Films, 2022).  It has been months and I cannot get it out of my head. I can’t write office-themed short stories anymore; they all end up being similar to Severance.

Music:

• C.A.R. - Any Percent.⁴⁴4 C.A.R., Any Percent, Bimba Records, 2021.  I heard this album for the first time at a cozy café in Ghent, and I just had to buy it.

Video games:

• Alan Wake II.⁵⁵5 Alan Wake II (Remedy Entertainment, 2023), published by Epic Games Publishing.  I wasn’t sure whether a sequel to the original Alan Wake would work well, but Remedy nailed it.

• System Shock.⁶⁶6 System Shock (Nightdive Studios, 2023), published by Prime Matter.  I never played the original (it’s really too dated), but this remake gets everything right.

What will 2024 bring?

I don’t know! I’m not clairvoyant.