See also: 2023 in review.

What did I achieve?

I switched jobs. My new employer is a significant improvement over my previous one.

I am glad that after I left my previous employer, I got three months of gardening leave, and qualified for unemployment benefits immediately after.

Health-wise, I’m doing well, too. This year, I’ve been cycling a lot. That’s generally good for my health — apart from the plethora of traffic accidents.

I finally figured out the cause of the weird headaches — migraines after all. Luckily, neither CT nor MRI scans of my head revealed anything out of the ordinary.

I got a (non-cancerous) tumor removed. I also started my isotretinoin treatment again, and hopefully after this, I will be rid of acne forever and ever.

There are a handful of projects I finished/released this year:

• I’m proud ddenv because it perfectly takes care of one of my needs.

• I am also proud of Denis’ Solitaire.

• I published the intricacies of implementing memoization in Ruby. It was well received.

My web site has evolved, too:

• I moved my hosting to Uberspace.

• There now are the Now, Ideas and Projects pages that I update weekly.

• I added support for full-width images with alt text.

• Custom fonts are gone; the only fonts that I now use are system fonts. This makes the site a lot lighter to load.

• I removed the dependency on Sass. All the styling is done with plain old CSS — no libraries, no post-processors, no frameworks.

• I finished another year of week­notes!

Where did I fall short?

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that I didn’t really do enough. Maybe that’s just me. Here are a few topics where I wish I had gone further.

My fiction writing has taken a backseat. I’ve published very little this year. I’ve definitely written more than I published; my drafts folder has plenty of half-finished works. I don’t care about publishing as much as I care about the process of writing. I’d like to continue with it at a regular pace, honing my craft.

I have even been skipping my regular Shut Up & Write meetups, though a large reason for that is the bad weather — cycling in cold rain is no fun.

I am woefully behind on the Alphabet Superset. I was supposed to be finished early 2024, but I’m only about 1/3rd through. I don’t really consider that a failure, but I am nonetheless annoyed by it.

In terms of technical writing, it’s not all roses. My Writing an Interpreter book unfortunately fell to the wayside sometime late 2024.

Health-wise, I’m still annoyed that I lost my FitBit. How could that have happened?!

I haven’t been particularly social this year. The start of the pandemic (five years ago now!) strained some of my friendships, and others just fizzled out over time. I’m still of the opinion that Berlin is not generally a very social city.

My birthday picnic didn’t happen. I tried! But there were too many rainy weekends, and eventually I forgot.

The whole idea of moving to London fell through. I decided that a visa tied to an employer is too risky, especially in an economy that wasn’t doing so well. Not too many employers were willing to sponsor visas either, making that move just even less likely. A move to London is still on my radar, but I have no idea when (or if) that’ll happen.

I’ve had a few personal software projects this year, but two big ones didn’t go anywhere. I put the work on D★Scribe, my implementation of a structured prose editor, on hold. Before that, I abandoned my budgeting app, too. I’ve got good reasons (I think) for putting these projects on hold, but I hope to revisit them when the time is right.

As far acting goes, I’m not really sure where I am going with this. I am certainly still enjoying it, and I find it meaningful, but opportunities in Berlin are quite limited.

My idea of writing a solo stage play is still there, but I have barely made progress. It still is in the exploratory phase, and I don’t have anything concrete yet. It’d be great to make progress there, but I don’t think I quite know how.

I also had quite a bad acting course at Instant Theatre Berlin this summer, which I now think was worse than just a waste of time. If I had that one as my first-ever acting class, I probably would have dropped the idea of acting entirely.

I don’t have reading goals, which is good because I haven’t done all that much reading. I read a handful of books, but abandoned more.

Last, but by far not least, I’ve developed a distinct traumatic response to traffic in Berlin. I’ve had too many cycling accidents and near-incidents, including multiple that could well have killed me. I’ve still got a scar that is still quite visible along the length of my left arm.

What else did I do this year?

I didn’t travel too much. I spent some time in London at the beginning of the year, which was quite nice. And in the summer, right before starting my new job, I spent some time in Bruges, in time for the Bruges Triennial.

My home has remained mostly the same, though I’ve gotten rid of quite some stuff — books and clothes, mostly. I haven’t bought much new stuff, but there’s still a lot that I’d like to get rid of. I don’t consider myself a minimalist, but a remarkably large amount of the stuff I own, I just don’t really need.

I spent quite some time improving my software development skills, especially around frontend and (desktop) GUI development. SwiftUI and AppKit, but also Electron and Preact with signals and cutting-edge CSS. I am becoming a true full-stack developer.

I have finished one more year of morning pages, which I continuously find useful. I haven’t done them with 100% consistency; traveling and being abroad can make it difficult to write them.

I’ve started using the Pomodoro technique much more, which — even though it is so simple — has made a big impact. It is the best at breaking my procrastinatory tendencies, and simultaneously helps me not burn myself out when I’m plowing through topics that I am deeply interested in (breaks are important).

I switched to Zed as my main code editor. It’s a nice change.

Even though it’s very silly, I loved my writing about audio and frequencies and scales in Week­notes 2024 W17: Irrational. Maybe my favorite bit of writing this year.

I also got a new passport with a pretty design that looks like a comic book!

What entertainment did I enjoy most this year?

• Books: Doctor Sleep¹¹1 Stephen King, Doctor Sleep (New York: Scribner, 2013). 
• Plays: Stupid Fucking Bird²²2 Stupid Fucking Bird, directed by Adam Ludwig, written by Aaron Posner (2024). 
• Music: Diamond Jubilee³³3 Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee, self-published, March 27, 2024. 
• Films: Midsommar⁴⁴4 Midsommar, written and directed by Ari Aster (A24, B-Reel Films, Nordisk Film, 2019). 
• Games: Baldur’s Gate 3⁵⁵5 Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios, 2023), published by Larian Studios. 

It was hard to make a clear choice.

What am I looking forward to in 2025?

I want to continue focusing on creative projects, whether it’s acting, writing, or something else entirely.

I also want to continue on hobby software projects, though I want to be careful to not get lost. Software development can be incredibly complex and time-consuming, so the projects I pick up need to be worth it.

Lastly, I want to retain a reliable and fulfilling career as a software developer.