2024
There goes 2024.
It was a year dominated by Ukraine and Gaza. Utterly horrific and unnecessary death courtesy of Putin and Netanyahu.
For me personally, 2024 was just fine. I was relatively healthy all year. The people I love were relatively healthy too. I don’t take that for granted.
Looking back on what I did and didn’t do during the year, here’s something interesting: I didn’t give a single conference talk. I spoke at a few events but as the host: Patterns Day, CSS Day, and UX London. That’s something I really enjoy and I think I’m pretty darn good at it too.
I was wondering why it was that I didn’t give a talk in 2024. Then Rachel said something:
That’s when I realised that An Event Apart would usually be the impetus behind preparing a conference talk. I’d lock myself away and spend ages crafting a presentation to match the calibre of that event. Then, once I had the talk prepared, I could give modified versions of it at other conferences.
With An Event Apart gone, I guess I just let the talk prep slide. Maybe that’ll continue into 2025 …although I’m kind of itching to give a talk on HTML web components.
In most years, speaking at conferences is what allows me to travel to interesting places. But even without being on the conference circuit I still travelled to lovely places in 2024. Turin, Belfast, Amsterdam, Freiburg, west Cork, Boston, Pittsburgh, Saint Augustine, Seville, Cáceres, Strasbourg, and Galway.
A lot of the travel was motivated by long-standing friendships. Exploring west Cork with Dan and Sue. Celebrating in Freiburg with Schorsch and Birgit. Visting Ethan and Liz in Boston. And playing music in Pittsburgh with Brad.
Frostapolooza was a high note:
I felt frickin’ great after being part of an incredible event filled with joy and love and some of the best music I’ve ever heard.
Being on sabattical for all of August was nice. It also meant that I had lots of annual leave to use up by the end of the year, so I ended up taking all of December off too. I enjoyed that.
I played a lot of music in 2024. I played in a couple of sessions for pretty much every week of the year. That’s got to be good for my mandolin playing. I even started bringing the tenor banjo out on occasion.
I ate lots of good food in 2024. Some of it was even food I made. I’ve been doing more and more cooking. I’ve still got a fairly limited range of dishes, but I’m enjoying the process of expanding my culinary repertoire a bit.
All in all, that’s a pretty nice way to spend a year: some travel, seeing some old friends, playing lots of music, reading books, and eating good food.
I hope for more of the same in 2025.
