2024 Review
3 Jan 2025
It's been a while since I published an annual review. I'm reminded that working on the review throughout the year is the best way of making this process enjoyable, rather than painful.
2022 "review". All annual reviews.
Highlights
I passed my driving test! This was my biggest goal for 2024. I'd previously tried learning to drive a couple of times as a teenager but always found it so stressful and scary that I gave up. This time it was also stressful and scary, but I didn't give up. I'm really proud of myself for sticking it out, and really grateful for the people and circumstances that helped me get it done. I have a lot to learn, still, but I'm officially allowed to drive a car all by myself! Hooray 🎉
For something different this year we rented a house for Christmas on Tassie's east coast and had a really quiet, relaxing break, and a much cooler (in temperature) Christmas than we're used to. We had Christmas lunch with some of my family and otherwise just spent a couple of days enjoying the quiet of being away from the city. After a year full of construction and roadworks noise in our street, machinery shaking our house, noisy trucks and motorbikes waking us up in the wee hours, and what felt like a constant barrage of city noise around us, it was a huge relief to spend some time in such a truly quiet place.
We spent almost a week in Sydney in July and were lucky to have amazing weather while we were there—sunny and low 20s pretty much every day. I wasn't sure what to expect but I really loved Sydney and definitely want to go back. I especially enjoyed the harbour and the ferries.
This year I took two more subjects for my Bachelor of Science: Design of Algorithms, and Calculus 2. Design of Algorithms was my second algorithms class, and definitely a step up in complexity, but also really interesting. I enjoyed learning about graph algorithms, binary search trees, and dynamic programming, though that last topic was really tough. Calculus 2 was really hard work, too, but it's a prerequisite for lots of interesting upcoming subjects so I had to push through it.
I also changed my major to Mathematics and Statistics this year, rather than Data Science, because there's a huge overlap but now I don't have to do the more industry- and project-focused final year Data Science major subjects.
This year I finally embraced routines and timers and had a lot of success. I’ve been using an app called Routinery on iOS that runs my routines for me. Two big issues I have are getting distracted by the wrong things and not knowing what to do next. Having an app that tells me when time is up for my current activity and what to do next is a massive help.
This was my second full year of writing in my journal every morning, which was helped by including journal time in my morning routine. I used an A5 Hobonichi HON (basically a hardcover Cousin), and wrote on every second line, because that suits my cursive handwriting better. I'll do the same again in 2025.
In January I went to the Australian Open again with my Mum. It was definitely worth it, though doing both the day and night sessions on the same day was pretty tiring. We had a lot of fun, and I look forward to going again, but we'll probably split it up across a couple of days next time.
I finished my Invisalign! I spent around 18-24 months on the process, with at least 3 rounds of aligners. I realised during my second round that changing after 11-12 days instead of the recommended 10 meant that each new aligner fit better, and reduced the risk of needing to re-scan and do a new round of aligners. By the end of the process I was really ready to be done with aligners, and in comparison, wearing a retainer at night feels like no hassle at all. And my teeth are so much straighter now! I'm really happy I did this, and again—grateful for the people and circumstances that made it possible.
I got my first roll of film developed this year, which I took with the Minolta camera I got for my birthday in November 2023. I've had about 4 rolls developed throughout the year, and I'm still really enjoying my film camera.
I started buying DK books on my iPad this year—encyclopaedias and nonfiction books for kids with lots of illustrations and diagrams (I have fond memories of having lots of DK books on my bookshelf as a kid, so I love that they're also the publisher fulfilling this need for me now). There's a lot about the world that I don't know, and I struggle to really take in information from dry, adult nonfiction books. Or even non-dry ones! I just seem to forget everything I read. I thought more images might help.
I've been reading about space, and chemistry, and history, and politics, and economics, and science. I still have lots to learn, but I’m really enjoying this approach so far.
I was also given a big dictionary for Christmas, which I love! I think it's way more enjoyable to look up words in a big book than on my phone, and I enjoy perusing it to learn new words, too.
Finally, I spent some time in my holidays this time last year learning to touch type numbers and symbols. I learned to touch type letters in high school, but the numbers and symbols always seemed harder and I didn't spend much time on them. As a programmer, though, I use punctuation a lot, and it would be nice to have the same speed for typing symbols, as well as words. It's quite hard to find touch typing materials that focus on numbers and punctuation, but I did find a couple of options and worked through some lessons. Throughout the year I've tried to touch type numbers and symbols as often as I can stand to, and I've definitely noticed an improvement.
This review is taking forever to write, and I keep coming up with new things to say. Perhaps that's a sign I should be blogging more on a regular basis... I'm going to stop here and finish off with a round-up of my favourite media of the year, but it feels important to mention that a lot of terrible things happened in the world this year. It's been another scary, infuriating, disappointing, sad year, in so many ways. I often feel hopeless and disgusted at how awful we humans are, on average. Sometimes it's nice to take stock of the good things that happened throughout the year, but it doesn't mean awful stuff didn't happen, too.
Favourite media
Books
You be Mother by Meg Mason became one of my favourite books this year. I especially loved all the local references, as much of it is set in Sydney.
I had a second go at the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, this time starting with the third book, as recommended to me by Josh. He was spot on—the angle of the third book was a better fit for me (generally not a SciFi reader), and I liked it so much I then went back to the start and read the rest of the series. Apart from the second book, which was my least favourite (but not bad), I loved all of them.
TV
Brush Up Life was weird but excellent. It had some really funny moments. Definitely worth a rewatch at some point. Things You Should Have Done was a little hit-and-miss but again, it had some very silly, very funny moments that really stuck with me. Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee was another very silly comedy that I enjoyed (both the Aus and NZ versions).
Both Scenes From a Marriage and Couples Therapy were conversation-starters this year. We watched the original Scenes From a Marriage series, which is from the 70s, and makes some really unique choices, like showing stills of the previous episode while the director explains what happened for the "previously on" at the start of each episodes. I also really loved how the director read out the credits at the end. Modern shows should definitely do that.
We also watched some more of Doublefine Psychodyssey this year, which is always worth watching. I hope we get to see more of them in the future.
Movies
Les Menus-Plaisirs (Trois Gros) was my favourite movie of this year, for sure. It's a very long, slow documentary that just lets you watch people doing their jobs in a fancy restaurant in France. I really loved it.
Tick, Tick, Boom wasn't amazing, but it was really nice to watch something with a focus on the theatre scene. I didn't realise how much I'd missed that sort of thing. National Theatre Live: Prima Facie was excellent. I read the play last year, I think, and enjoyed it, but seeing it on stage was even better. The staging was excellent.
Kneecap was really fun and I enjoyed the music more than I expected to. Balcony Movie was a rewatch that lived up to my memory of it.
Where is the Friend's House had a Roald Dahl kind of feel, where all the adults are useless, if not malicious, and the poor kids are having a rotten time just trying to do the right thing. It's frustrating to watch, but really cute, too. Back to Dust was one of our last films of the year, and a really nice one—up until the ending, at least. It was essentially just a study of kindess and decency, and poverty.
Games
Lil' Gator Game on Switch was great. I'm not a huge gamer, so I often find games confusing or too hard, but this one really hit the spot in terms of difficulty and fun. The controls felt really good, which seems rare, and the story was cute.
Frog Detective was very silly and fun. I'd never played it, so I bought the bundle on Switch and played all 3.
Albums
- SODA and 0202 by The Rubens
- Serotonin Dreams and Lucid Dreams by BoyWithUke
- Be More Kind by Frank Turner
- Parallel Lines by Blondie
2025
I didn't go swimming at all this year—last year I finally took swimming lessons and learned how to swim! I got to a point where I could swim 25m freestyle, but not with a lot of confidence, nor stamina. I'm really proud of myself for doing the lessons, because they were terrifying, and I found out I was a lot worse at swimming than I thought—I had a really hard time even keeping my head under the water at the beginning!
This year I had other things to focus on, like learning to drive, and just being busy. But the pool is one of the places I want to drive to, because it's inconvenient to go there on public transport, so for 2025 I can improve my driving and swimming skills all at once if I go to the pool more often.