2024

Okay, last day of the year, so as I did in 2023 and 2022, time to bang out a summary:

• Started off the year with my very first case of COVID. I was pissed I made it almost four whole years without catching it, and then the Denver airport Centurion lounge did me in. I was lucky to get on Paxlovid immediately, and spent basically two weeks asleep on an air mattress in my home office, watching the movie Moneyball over and over for some reason. I’d planned to go to Vegas for my birthday, but nope.
• Thanks to the time stuck in bed, I released my first album, 0. It’s an ambient synth album and pretty much nobody heard it, but it was fun to do. I recorded the whole thing in Logic Pro, mostly by cutting and pasting notes in the editor and using virtual synths.
• I got Invisalign, which was a huge waste of money and I wish I had not done it. Had to fire a dentist over this.
• I went to Anaheim for work and stayed at Disneyland. It was almost entirely a work thing, but there were some brief reverberations with previous visits, which I wrote about in the link.
• I went to Vietnam. This trip was amazing and difficult and shocking and incredible. I think more than any other trip I’ve taken, it’s had the biggest impact in disrupting my preconceptions about a country.
• I went to Barcelona on a work trip. This was almost entirely work and I only had a brief bit of time to see Spain, but what I saw was interesting.
• I broke my right arm in a stupid fall. I think this threw me off for about a month. No, I didn’t get painkillers.
• I was supposed to go to New Orleans in August, but Sarah caught covid right before we left, so I cancelled.
• In September, I threw out my back in a major way and spent a week on the couch, unable to move.
• In October, based on the above, I made the decision to enter food jail  and completely locked down my diet. I’ve lost about 30 pounds since then, but probably have another 30 to go.
• I still walk every day, but thanks to the collapse of FitBit and the stupidity of Apple Health, I have no idea how many steps or miles I walked. It’s probably about the same as last year or a little less.
• I had both an aunt and an uncle die this year. Both were siblings on my mom’s side. The aunt was my favorite aunt and that affected me, but I did not write about it because the whole thing was non-public and weird.
• My 2014 Prius C was traded in for a 2024 Prius Limited.
• I published my 18th book, Decision Paralysis. It’s my second-longest book (100,000 words), and I’m happy I’m finally writing.
• I re-published Vol. 13.
• I wrote maybe 100,000 words between another large book and other random stuff.
• I only published 20 entries here, down from 25 last year, and way down from when I used to post daily. I briefly tried a Substack, but that’s stupid and just another distraction.
• I spent a lot of time, money, and effort working on my mental health. I won’t get into details, but I feel a lot better now than I did 365 days ago. This is my most important and challenging project, although writing every day is a big help with this.

I don’t have any resolutions for 2025. Keep writing. Get everything else out of the way. That’s enough.