In this document, I look back at my year 2024. First I will discuss the data I’ve gathered and compare it to my goals, then I’ll close off with the lessons I’ve learned in 2024 and how I’ll try to apply them in 2025. This document is the foundation of my 2025 planning & goals document, it is mostly interesting to myself, but perhaps some of you find value in it as well.
Make
- 🔵 Publish one project per month.
- Must minimally include:
- ✅ One sewing project – I made a new bag
- ✅ One web-development project – I made a new version of my dictionary project
- ✅ One generative art project – I created generative art Christmas cards
- ❌ One audio play
- ❌ One zine
- ✅ Publish written reflection + professional photos on this blog.
- Must minimally include:
I made a handful of products this year, both physical and digital. These products came to fruition for various reasons, but none of them were because I had set the goal to make more products. In fact, I never really looked back at this goal during the year. I think this is because the definition and the deliverables were not strong enough. In 2025 I will double down on this goal, but I’ll put some extra measures in place to help me commit. Because making products is what gives me a tremendous amount satisfaction, pride, and joy, so I need to follow these feelings to propel my life forwards.
Collaborate
- Organise a public project
- ❌ Organise one project that is physically accessible for general public
- ❌ The organisation must involve multiple other parties
- ❌ There must be photographic evidence of the attendance of the public
- External publication
- ❌ Publish at least one piece of writing at an external website
- Media coverage
- ❌ Have at least one piece of media being publish about one of my projects
- Learn Bulgarian
- ✅ Master Bulgarian at A1 level (in order to communicate with my local community)
I’ve been severely lacking in the collaboration department. I’ve done a grand total of 0 collaborative projects and I’m spending most of my days on my own. Even though I’m very comfortable being on my own and doing projects on my own, I realise that I need social stimulus to keep the forward momentum in my life. I think however that these collaborative goals will naturally follow if I simply start doing more projects, so for next year I won’t include these goals. I hope that in this way I will simplify my goals document and find greater focus, whilst still obtaining the things I set out to do.
The only good thing coming out of this was signing up for the Bulgarian language course. Becky and I learned a lot about the language and the culture, but also made friends, and went to various school parties, which was a great social stimulus.
Documenting
- 🔵 Log personal data on a daily basis (resulting in 365 entries) [127 entries recorded]
- 🔵 Alcohol consumption (g)
- 🔵 Caffeine consumption (g)
- 🔵 Weight (kg)
- 🔵 Mood (3x a day)
- 🔵 Physical activities (h)
- 🔵 Side project work (yes/no)
- 🔵 Reading progress (books/pages)
- Taking high-quality project photos
- ✅ For each project I finish this year (see making-goals) – I made a new bag
- ✅ For each multi-day outdoor adventure – Mountaineering trip – Stara Planina hiking trip
- ✅ At least 3 published photo’s per instance
- Newsletter
- 🔵 Publish minimally one newsletter per month
In 2024 I’ve done an okay job at documenting my life. I’ve recorded 127 entries into my data-journal and a few more into my regular journal. Even though this is a good amount of entries, I can’t use it for any analysis because it’s an insufficient coverage of the year. At the start of 2024 I was noting the data down in my Apple Notes app on my phone, but at the end of the year I had switched to a written form sheet in my journal. I’m pretty sure that I still need a few iterations to find the perfect method to make sure that I get a good coverage of the year next year.
In terms of documenting the products, projects, and expeditions I’ve got a good backlog (see above). One of the revelations of this year was my rekindled connection with the medium of video. In my early teenage years I ran a Youtube channel with my friends and I really enjoyed shooting and editing these videos. I had forgotten all about that part of my history until I dug up my old camcorder at the start of 2024. I then used the camcorder to make 5 video logs of various trips: the family ski trip in February, the mountaineering trip in June, our Stara Planina hiking trip in July, trip to Italy with friends in October, and a family ski trip in December.
Making these video logs gave me the idea to use the medium of video to document my 2025 projects. A big inspiration for the use of video as a documentation medium is the generative artist Dan Catt.
About three months ago, Dan shared his vision on documenting his life. One of the reasons he shares his week-notes in video format online is that his kids can look back at them in 40 years and have a recording of their father’s voice, thoughts, and looks. Instead of only having stylised recordings of life’s highlights (like a wedding, a holiday, or a graduation), there will be mundane, everyday recordings. These are the more truthful representations, and will be of more emotional value for later generations.
So, whereas I enjoy the distance, control and anonymity that writing gives me, I would also like to challenge myself to explore the medium of video to record a more temporal image of myself.
Physical
- Calisthenics goals, be able to do:
- 🔵 One pistol squat
- 🔵 One sissy squat
- 🔵 One skater squat
- 🔵 One dragon squat
- Ultra marathons
- ✅ Start the Sofia ultra
- ✅ Finish the Gozo ultra
- Expeditions
- ✅ Alpine course, learning mountaineering skills (planned in July)
- ✅ Finish minimally one multi-day hiking trip
- Publish written reflection + high quality documentation on this blog
- ❌ Finish minimally one multi-day cycling trips (solo)
- Publish written reflection + high quality documentation on this blog
Just by having a look at my annual stats, you can tell that I’ve had a tremendously successful year in terms of sporting. I’ve smashed through last years annual running distance stats by running almost 1.000KM in 2024 (596KM in 2023). Next to that, I also managed to reach almost all of my fitness goals. I ran my first two ultra marathons, I went on an alpine mountaineering course, I spend a couple of days on a multi-day hiking trip, and I’ve worked hard on my squat goals (not finished yet, but I’m making progress).
The thing I’m most happy about is that I managed to listen to my body quite well, stay mostly injury free. Every time I was on a roll and felt like I could ramp up my training significantly, I kept my head cool and only increased my training load step by step. When I felt that my plantar fascia would play up, I would decrease my training load and give my body time to adjust.
I’m a bit surprised that I did only 8h of yoga in 2024, there might be a error in my data logging there, because I had the idea that I did more yoga than ever. I’ll have to look into that. Anyway, I’d like to continue doing a lot of yoga and stretching, as I experience the positive effects of it in a very immediate fashion.
Spiritual / mental
- 🔵 Tracking mood (see documentation-goals for details)
- Fasting
- ✅ Annual participation for Lent (40 days consuming no; alcohol, meat, mayonnaise, cigarettes, drugs, lunch)
- 🔵 Finish one 24h water fast
- 🔵 Finish one 48h water fast
- ✅ Finish one 72h water fast
- Yoga
- 🔵 Do a total of 1h per week, 52h in total
- Alcohol challenge
- ❌ Minimally 17/18 weeks of no drinking
- ❌ Weeks of > 21 drinks
- ❌ Maximum of 44/30 excessive drinking days
Yes, I tracked my mood, but only 127/366 days, so not enough for interesting analysis. This is something I’ll have to improve in 2025. The fasting went well this year, I especially enjoyed the 72h water fast, which I intend to repeat in 2025. I did a fair bit of yoga, but not nearly enough. It’s part of my morning routing when I’m having a good sporting streak (e.g. when I’m training for an event), but I’d like it to become part of my everyday morning routine.
The alcohol challenge is an interesting one, as I managed to significantly increase my sober weeks, whilst also slightly increase my overall alcohol consumption.
Looking at the overview table does not make me very happy. Even though I did a good job increasing my sober weeks, I simultaneously managed to drink more alcohol overall. Looking at my monthly alcohol consumption graphs of 2023 and 2024 might explain how this is possible.
Even though I had higher extremes in 2023 (June and December), my overall monthly alcohol consumption seems to have been lower during that year. Especially during the first quarter of the year. To me it shows how important self-imposed restrictions are regarding alcohol. It also shows me how a few months of minimal drinking can impact the annual stats. In 2025 I’m aiming to apply this lesson and drink far less than I’ve ever done before.
A final reflection point regarding the mental/spiritual-pillar is my attempt to ditch my phone in 2024. I bought myself a feature phone and managed a few streaks of multiple days/weeks to not use my smartphone, but in the end there was always a reason to return to the smartphone. Either traveling, tickets, maps, or two-factor-verification. In 2025 I’d like to get better at not using my smartphone, it’s extremely beneficial for my mental heath and it has a strong positive correlation to increasing my productivity and my other annual goals.
Reading
- ✅ Read 46/40 books [🔼 2%]
- ✅ Read 17/15 female authors
- ✅ Read 5/5 mountain-themed books
- ✅ Read 6/5 sea-themed books
- ❌ Study T.S. Elliot
- Study the Four Quartets
- Study the Wasteland
- Read minimally one secondary source
- Publish one essay to conclude the studies
- ✅ Create book review template
- Fill it in after reading every book, in order to have more structured/thorough reviews.
- 40 written reviews at the end of the year
Apart from the T.S. Elliot reading challenge, I managed to hit all of my targets. In this article you can check out my reading challenges in more detail, with links to all my reviews. On my Goodreads page you can check out all of the books I read in 2024.
I reached my goal reading 40 books already in November this year, which was a very relaxed experience. I loved that I didn’t feel forced to read more books at the end of the year, so that makes me think that 40 books is a good goal to use for each year. Below you can check out some of my reading stats. Most notably is the 37% of female authors that I read this year. If it wasn’t for the female-author-reading challenge, this proportion would have been far lower. This provides a solid base for me to continue this challenge into the future.
Charity
- ❌ Incorporate ‘unintentional morality‘ into minimally one of my projects
- Publish a how-to guide and make all files open-source
I have done 0.0 in this regard. That’s not entirely true, because I’ve increased my annual donations to charity. I’ve never donated as much as I have in this year, it accounts to almost 2% of my income. Most of it goes to my family’s charity that supports the local community Port Loko, Sierre Leone, but I’ve also made some random donations to various other charities.
But like I’ve said before, making donations is the lowest form of charity. It’s lazy, it’s cheap, it’s cold, distant, and dedainistic. I’ve concluded this before, and it was the main reason why I wanted to incorporate charitas into my personal projects. I’ve not done many projects, and I’ve included no charitas into the projects that I have done. A big disappointment. But since I’ll be doubling down on my projects next year, I’ll also double down on this practical implementation of charitas.
Conclusion and overarching lessons
Overall, my year 2024 has been a good one. It has come with a handful of interesting, new experiences, like moving to Bulgaria, learning the Cyrillic alphabet and Bulgarian language, running my first ultra marathon, becoming a mountaineer, and reading a record amount of books.
It has been tremendously successful on the physical front, but not so much on the project front. I’ve learned many personal lessons on the physical front and I got to learn my body a lot better. On the one hand that makes me very happy since that was my goal and it’s great for longevity, but on the other hand I don’t really identify as a sporty person at my core. I feel that doing projects, making stuff, and writing are more fundamental parts of my personality, and it thus makes me a bit sad that I was lacking on that front in 2024. So for 2025 I will make it my main goal to double down on that.
Another thing that will help me stay on track with my goals will be the implementation of quarterly reflection moments. Again, I’m inspired here by the penplotter artist Dan Catt, who also structures his year into four quarters. It helps to keep an overview of the goals and to adjust the direction and planning if necessary. So for next year, I’ll be sharing my reflections after each quarter.
Apart from that, I’m very excited about the new year. I’ll have new physical challenges for myself, some new study topics, and most importantly: I’ll be working on and finishing various products!