End of year report card: 2024

End of Year Report: 2024.

2024 had a positive start to the year and showed promise across several domains, with good behaviour and respectable results. Unfortunately, 2024 has struggled to maintain the performance we might expect based on early metrics, and will need to work hard to recover a strong position going into 2025. It is possible that 2024 took on too much and may benefit from concentrating on areas of weakness. In particular, 2024 would do well to pay attention to reducing loss and grief which can be distracting, and improving on physical health, which may in turn improve performance in mental health. Though it must be acknowledged that there have been barriers to 2024 thriving as fully as had been hoped, it would be lovely to see 2024 continue to step outside of restrictive comfort zones as far as possible as we move into 2025.

Grade – C. Effort – A. Behaviour – B.

*******

I’m writing this with the assistance of AI. Do I need to credit AI? I don’t think so. My brain is doing all of the work. It’s just that my fingers are doing none of it. Instead, I’ve asked the computer to take down dictation, saving me the pain of typing. I have been here before, kind of. I’ve used dictation for work purposes and for academic essay purposes, but try as I might, I have not been able to use it for creative purposes. And yet here I am. Reflecting on my year, out loud, alone in my kitchen, feeling ridiculous. Well, I guess it forces me to edit.

2024 has not been my best year. I’ve lost a cat, a dog and a grandfather. I have wrangled for months over a car and ended up right back where we started, which was at least better than where we were after we started. My daughter has acquired a new health diagnosis which will go on limiting her capacity to do things she loves for some time and may ultimately require surgery, and my son has acquired a new neurodiversity diagnosis which was old news by the time we got the piece of paper. My romantic partner is…. Did I have one? I recall having one? Now I have this chap knocking about with whom I share managerial duties. He’s a good worker, but there’s no denying we could use more staff.

I have also GAINED a cat, which sounds like a lovely story, but naturally has led to a feline impasse which necessitates strict segregation of the house via shut doors guarded at all times by a cat on either side, each just waiting to launch themselves into a fight. It is evident that one of these cats is going to have to go, but naturally one child has been transformed via the medium of kitten fluff into a teenager who uses actual words by the kitten, whilst the other transpires to be allergic to the kitten and prefer the older beast.

And then there’s the AI. Let me expand. Early in 2024, a challenge was set for us to lay out our aspirations for the coming year. I wrote about improving balance in how I was using my most limited resource, time. I also, as the challenge was specifically about writing, spoke about wanting to become better, as a writer – clearly it is impossible for me to become better as a human being as I am already largely perfect. How did it go? Well, did I become better? That’s not a rhetorical question by the way, but I thought I did. To a point. And then, I didn’t. Because I became a better writer through sheer practice and I stopped practicing. Why? My arms gave out on me. There was a time some years ago that my RSI became so bad that I was unable to drive for two years, so I know how bad this can get. I’m not there yet, but it’s fair to say driving hurts. As does gripping, lifting, dangling it as I walk, picking my nose or looking at it funny. And typing and scrolling. Obviously. I need to rest it, to not keep repeating the repetition that has re-aggravated it. And so I am now the writerly equivalent of a Christian who only worships on high holidays, and damn but I miss the weekly service. There is something about frequency and consistency which gets you closer to God, isn’t there?

This has been a learning point though. I have learnt WHY I like to write, and why I like to write is all about getting closer to God. In the metaphorical sense. For reference, I now have Closer, Nine Inch Nails, in my head. This is also, I think, why the dictation doesn’t work for me. Writing, you see, is ALL up in my head. Six months ago I might have said I love stories, or I love language, and these are both true, but I can read for that. What I love about writing is flow. I am not a slow writer, and I am not a good editor. Where my joy lies is in the parkour-esque leap from word to word, the in-flight assessment of just where and how to place my foot and how to swing and tilt my body to reach the ledge beyond, in the visceral lurch of the plummets and the tight spin of the rolls. In finding myself on the roof, panting, taut and buzzing, intact, and totally spent.

In short, I love flow.

It should be noted, I have reverted now to the use of my fingers. My flow does not come in speech.

Now, the profound lesson I SHOULD have learnt here is that if you can find WHAT you like about a thing, then you can seek it elsewhere. So, um, any recommendations? Should I take up ballroom dancing or figure skating? The trouble is, I can’t have a whip round the rink while I wait for my daughter to fall asleep, can I. I can’t ski perfect turns down the mountain before school run or crack out an artistic swimming routine in my lunch break. Writing is such a damn handy hobby! And if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s such a damn HANDY hobby. Use of my upper limbs is required. Given I largely write whilst simultaneously trying to steer my offspring through their evenings, even if I could adapt to a verbal medium it seems probable that my family would seriously cramp my style, and quite fairly so.

So what must I do? I must, as I am sure we all recognise, defer gratification. I must sacrifice the short term for the sake of the long. The trouble is, this is in direct opposition to the OTHER lesson of the year, which is that I must seize the day, for who knows what will come. Well, actually, we all know what will come, it’s just how quickly. What will come is, if we are lucky, diminishing capabilities, followed by a rapid and extreme reduction in capability to absolute zero. All the potential that once effervesced about us in a haze of warmth will be redistributed and we shall be no more. I feel my diminishing now. I have felt it for some years and I know it will only accelerate from here. This I understand. But seeing my daughter stymied in the things SHE wants to do at 13, well, that stings. Hopefully, things will improve, but we have been told to expect two years, and Dr Google paints a picture that makes that seem optimistic. Meanwhile, while I know that my child is inconvenienced and uncomfortable, and I am cross about it, a close friend of mine has less cause for optimism as her child begins to struggle with a degenerative and life limiting condition before he has even finished primary school. There is no time, is there, like the present. Unfortunately, we are not always on the ball with that, and sometimes it feels like there is no time like yesterday.

So what am I left with? Hold back today for the good of tomorrow, and also live today because tomorrow is uncertain. Here we are at balance again, and we’ve already see I have no great skill here. So here I am, writing a piece to answer the challenge to “reflect on the past year and share a story that reveals a profound lesson or insight that stayed with you” and what have I got? What profundity has echoed through my year? Um….

No, that’s it. Um….. Now I’m not shy of a profound pronouncement, and if you REALLY want me to utter one here, then I’m sure I can come up with something. I make it a habit to expound my understanding of any piece of publically situated seemingly unintelligible modern art I stumble across with friends. It amuses me far more than it amuses them, of course, but I am also surprised at how often I come up with something that once said seems like I must have thought it before I started speaking, implying that the art actually IS saying something to me all along. But this time? This time let me be entirely authentic. The lesson I have learnt this year is that shit happens and you’re not going to be able to stop it all and it will leave you with rope burns but you just have to keep seeking your feet and looking for the good bits to balance it out. And how do we create balance? Um….

Well, we keep trying. On a tightrope, you don’t find your groove and cruise on over, do you? You constantly readjust. And if there is a lesson I can take from this year it is only to stop feeling crap about myself because I’m flailing like the apocalypse rendered in interpretive dance. With jazz hands. I do not have this figured out. And probably, I will not ever have this figured out. And, dearest reader, if you tell me you HAVE, I’m going to call you a liar.

So there’s my lesson. Balance is constant readjustment. If you ever find it, it will be fleeting and mostly all you are aware of is the lack of it.

Of course, it’s not been all bad. I’ve had some bloody good times this year too. Some wonderful moments in fact. Too many to list. There have been trips away and time with people who matter, there has been wonderful encouragement in something I love doing (here’s looking at you, kid) and new adventures too – I even joined a local writers group and had a shot at a “novella” with them. And now in December, we are here, under this roof, warm and dry and preparing for the goodness of Christmas, even if we are celebrating by embodying the stress levels of Mary and Joseph on their way to get taxed. Balance, see? It doesn’t come without effort.

And so I give 2024 a C grade. It seems to have had an undue measure of loss and some quite disproportionate problems, but it tried hard, and some of its work showed definite merit. 2024, take a bow, smile for the audience, exit stage left with a smile and jazz hands. 2025, this is your cue….