Mon May 05 2025

2024 Year Notes

in: year-notes

I remain super un-inspired to write over the last few years. Which is a shame - because it's a a great way to learn. And very uninspired to write about 2024 in particular. So, here are some very short year notes for 2024.

Why don't I want to write about 2024…

2024 was in some ways great, genuinely so, life is good…

But it was over-shadowed by grief and the preparation for grief. You can find out about that in this post https://pauldambra.dev/2024/09/wwmd.html (unless you'd like to avoid grief)

Goals I chose for 2024

work

  • continue becoming a better engineer and team-mate
  • take more time to lift my head up and look at the horizon
  • get better at digging into tricky problems
  • get better at not being distracted by tricky problems if there is some higher value work I should be doing
  • speak to customers for at least 5 hours over the year

home

  • more time with my family (screens off, not watching telly)
  • solidify my transactional Italian, figure out how to head towards conversational Italian
  • train at the gym at least twice a week every week (and lose weight)
  • visit Italy at least twice

Travel

Google doesn't support timeline in the web view anymore… 🤷 So, no image of my travel

I visited

  • Sicily
    • to hack on a heatmaps product
  • Valencia
    • for a team offsite
  • Vienna
    • for a team onboarding
  • Mykonos
    • for the whole company offsite

it is wild to me to consider that much travel in a year that felt so small

Work

At one point I was outside The Christie in Manchester (a specialist cancer treatment hospital we are so lucky to have). I overheard a man on the phone, anxious, agitated, almost shouting: "they've said they can't see me! i can't come back another day. if i have to take more time off work i'll lose my job".

I am uncountably grateful to have a job where I was told to take whatever time I needed. Where colleagues picked up the slack. And that I enjoy so much.

Me

I lost 12kg in 2024. The unrelenting drudgery of not eating is so dull.

I've continued enjoying cooking. Food has always been an expression of love in my life.

first pasta of 2024

the first pasta I cooked in 2024

last pasta of 2024

the last pasta I cooked in 2024

My favourite moment of 2024?

Cheesy, but it was when my dad said "i'd be happy to be served that pasta in Italy"

the pasta my dad thought was good enough for italy

What writing this taught me I want to do in 2025

OMG I have no idea… we're nearly 6 months through. I think I just need a year without life-grinding disruption.

Let's just carry everything forwards…

work

  • continue becoming a better engineer and team-mate
  • take more time to lift my head up and look at the horizon
  • get better at digging into tricky problems
  • get better at not being distracted by tricky problems if there is some higher value work I should be doing
  • speak to customers for at least 5 hours over the year

home

  • more time with my family (screens off, not watching telly)
  • solidify my transactional Italian, figure out how to head towards conversational Italian
  • train at the gym at least twice a week every week (and lose weight)
  • visit Italy at least twice

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