Back Original

2024: Year in Review

Hello friends!

Welcome to my fourteenth annual year in review post! The tradition continues. Yes, I definitely missed 2022 and 2023, but I put up very delayed versions recently (see 2023 and 2022). So maybe not truly annual, but what can you do. You can read past years at #yearinreview. I have been thinking of doing a look-back on past years posts, if you have ideas on what that could look like, please let me know!

2024 was a weird year. Work was incredibly stressful as 2023 ended with layoffs and some startup drama. As the year got going though, we pushed through and had a lot of success, especially in the back half of the year. But don't let movies or pundits sugarcoat it, startup life is exhausting. Some days I definitely miss working for large companies. In those places it is easier to just focus on your own work and be disconnected from the businesses success. Other days I love the excitement and challenge of being part of such a small team. It is a whirlwind of stress, excitement, failure and experimentation.

Mel started a Masters program in Criminal Justice, focusing on Prison Food Reform at the London School of Economics in September, which also lead to a very unusual Autumn. Before that she was working for a few local businesses and doing lots of college application stuff.

Beasley continued to be in good health and turned fifteen! She spends most of her time in bed keeping tabs on the neighborhood squirrels and dogs.

That's it for the overview, here we go!

January Photos

February Photos

We arrived home from a month long road trip traveling to the west coast and back on New Years day. We were ragged and exhausted but glad to be home.

The next two months we mostly laid low, recovering from our long adventure. Briefly though, I went back to the west coast, California and Arizona, for a work trip. During which I hung out with my cousin Jared whom I hadn't seen in ~20 years. We also had two guests, my brother Travis and our good friend Carl.

March Photos

In March, we went on a trip to the Bahamas for our friend Sue's birthday. Mel has been before, but this was my first time, and it was wonderful. I normally am more of a mountain guy than a beach guy, but this trip was just delightful.

I felt more relaxed on this trip than I have in a very long time, which was truly wonderful. A week not thinking about work, the world, agendas, etc. was liberating.

April Photos

Melissa was accepted to the London School of Economics and Political Science. We wanted to figure out where she might live if she accepted, so we made a quick weekend trip to London. It was a whirlwind weekend, but we had a blast and learned a lot. We saw our friend Emma, explored the city, looked at lots of sketchy dorms, ate some really good food, and then flew back home.

Also, we stared at a solar eclipse as it passed by us.

May Photos

Oh my, May. In May my brother Travis broke his leg while rock climbing in Yosemite. It was a real bad break (multiple compound fracture). With the help of my friend Xander, I flew to SFO and drove to Fresno. Then helped Travis get checked out of the hospital, get all of his stuff and shuttle him to my parent's house in Santa Rosa. Shouts to Yosemite Search and Rescue, Travis's climbing partner Nick, Niket, Xander and Fresno Community Hospital who all helped making taking care of Travis possible and helping make sure he didn't lose anything. As a side note, Travis is almost fully healed less than a year later, because modern science is amazing and young fit bodies heal like magic.

I ended up staying in California for a week or so to help my parents take care of Travis. I also got to see some friends and celebrate my mom's birthday while I was there, which was a nice coincidence.

When I got back to NY, Mel and I celebrated our sixth anniversary! We went out to dinner at a new restaurant in Kingston, NY at the recommendation of our friend Frankie and had a great time.

June Photos

July Photos

June and July were a whirlwind. Melissa went to the Montreal Grand Prix with our friend McKenna. I went to California to go fishing with Travis and my Dad at Lake Almanor.

Both of us went down to DC for Audrey and Pat's wedding. They are such wonderful friends and their ceremony was small and beautiful. While there we caught a Washington Nationals game with Phoenix and wandered the Smithsonian, as you do.

It isn't mentioned anywhere else, but over the last two years we have gotten pretty addicted to Formula 1. I feel like this isn't uncommon among my fellow Americans, but it's been fun to pick up a new sport and learn all of the drama and rules and everything.

August Photos

I went to Palm Springs, CA for work, which was the hottest place I have ever been to. It was over 110 degrees Fahrenheit most days. Not my kind of place.

Mel and I made our yearly journey to the New York Renaissance Faire, which was a blast as always.

I had dinner with a bunch of colleagues in NYC, as we now have almost ten people in the area.

Mel did a lot of packing, because she would be leaving for London soon.

September Photos

In September, we moved Mel to London for a year. I went out with her for a week to help set up her flat and get her settled. The flat she ended up renting remotely was... problematic. It's in a great neighborhood but the flat itself had all sorts of problems. We put a lot of work in and got it livable for the year though. She ran into a lot of the logistical and bureaucratic problems I had when I lived in London, plus a few new fun ones. My past trauma made it easy to be able to sort some of them out quickly, which was a good feeling.

Before the move, we did another quick trip to the Bahamas for McKenna's birthday. After the move I hung out with Will at the New York Modular Society 5th year anniversary.

October Photos

October was quiet. I kept playing D&D with my new group at the Gunks Gaming Guild in New Paltz. I started going into the city weekly to see colleagues, as we opened a new office near Bryant Park.

McKenna and I went to a Halloween painting class. Niket, Anthony and I went to Keens Steakhouse, Sumana and I went to the Queens Night Market. All three events were a delight.

November Photos

In November, I went to London for Thanksgiving to see Melissa. It was a great trip, we spent a lot of time just hanging out, and I got to wander London while she was in class.

In my memory, that was the biggest thing I did, but looking at photos, I'm reminded of two other big things that happened:

First, I did a weekend trip to Philadelphia to see Carl and Sam. We ate food, played boardgames and hung out with their adorable cats.

The second was a bit longer. At the end of October I spent two weeks volunteering remotely for the Kamala Harris campaign. I did various SRE and programming things for the campaign. I then spent the first week of November in Williamsburg at the campaign HQ helping out. It was a very sad ending, but I'm proud of the work we did. I miss working in Politics, and this reminded me how hard and rewarding it is. As we lost, I did kind of block the three weeks out.

Grid item 1Grid item 2Grid item 3

I weirdly took barely any photos in December... but I arrived back from London and then didn't do anything all month. Melissa arrived back in NY for the holidays and we just stayed home and relaxed. Beasley was incredibly grateful all three of us were back together, and lots of snuggles on both the couch and bed were had. We went to bed at 9:30pm on December 31st.

How did I do on my 2024 goals?

In my 2024 goals post, I set out the following goals:

I posted an update in July. Since then, some improvements were made.

Writing: Keep a public culture consumption diary, Blog once a month, Finish locative garden.

No major update here since I posted my update, but I am happy with the progress I've made. I wish I had better news about locative garden, but overall, I'm happy that I'm regularly writing.

I'm regularly playing D&D at the Gunks Gaming Guild in New Paltz. I'm regularly making music. Exercise and fishing I did ok with, but in general not great.

Finances: Remove all credit card debt

I need to write more about debt, my struggles and my feelings about it. My shame around debt is something I'm still working through. My spending habits haven't really been in a good place since around 2014, and they really caught up to me in 2023 and 2024. I want to write more about this at some point, but not until I feel a bit more success.

That being said, I made some really good progress in December after lots of research and talking to various institutions. Shoutout to r/debtfree for providing me some needed inspiration, and my therapist for helping me through the shame portions of debt management. I am not out of credit card debt, but I am making progress.

Goals for 2025

My goals for the year are below. I am going back to my old style of using the OKR Framework to define my personal goals. It's a bit much, but I've found I meet my goals more consistently when I group them by objective and a measurable action.

One thing to note is that I didn't put any professional goals in here. 2025 will be my twentieth year as a professional software developer, which is a bit of a trip. I started getting paid to code in the Spring of 2005 by the County of Sonoma Information Services Department. Since then I've done a lot of interesting work, and achieved a lot. My overarching goal for the next few years is the same as it has been since 2020: to eventually lead an engineering department at a tech company. Right now my focus towards that goal is to just do the work and help the company succeed. We'll see if that plan pays out, but currently doesn't have too many short-term achievements needed beyond working.

So with the context out of the way, here are my goals for 2025:

Improve Mental Health

I have long fought with depression. Therapy and drugs have helped a lot, but mental health is not something you cure. I wanted to be explicit in my daily tasks for helping my mental health, even though most of my goals are around managing my mental state already.

Make Art Publicly

I have two art projects I want to finish:

  1. locative.garden, which is a collection of short stories that friends and family backed on Kickstarter in 2021 (🤦).
  2. Sub Alpine Drift #1, an electronic music album I have been working on in my spare time.

Both of these projects I want to continue making in public. I often feel weird about that, as it requires a decent amount of energy to bare your unfinished work to the public. When I was younger, I found this a lot easier, but as I've gotten older, I think about it more. So this year, I want to make sure I'm working on my music and writing muscles every day, to improve my confidence and also my skill, and hopefully get myself publishing progress, if not finishing, these two works.

Decrease Debt

This was the year I realized I can't be trusted with credit cards. I should have probably realized this a decade ago, but here we are. By the end of the year I want to close the majority of cards open in my name (there are currently five).

I also want to get better at budgeting. I do an ok job of this currently, but I mostly think about it monthly. The last few months of 2024, I started doing daily roundups of spending, and I found it really helpful to make me understand my habits. I want to make this a part of my daily routine to continue down a better financial path.

Get out of the house

These are all things I love to do, and I want to track them. The weeks I get out of the house (I work from home, so inertia definitely keeps me there) I feel a lot better. More connected to the world, and less stressed.

Summary

Ok so daily I need to do the following:

This seems doable, but also a lot. I'm bad at taking time for myself.

I'm not sure if 2024 was a good year. It feels like it flew by with a lot of ups and downs. Looking back, it was enjoyable, even if it was very stressful. No regrets though, so that's good. To paraphrase Chuck Yeager, "any landing you can walk away from is a good one", and I'm still walking.

I'm grateful to all of the friends and family I saw in 2024, and I hope I see you in 2025. We're still in Beacon, NY, so if you'd like to come visit, please let me know. I love it here in the Hudson Valley. Great people, food, nature and art. There is a possibility of Mel and I moving in 2026 after Mel graduates, so I'm hoping to make the most of my year in this beautiful place.

Best of luck and lots of love to you and your family,

/Nat