2024—The Year Nothing Got Better Except For The Few Things That Did

Here’s my retrospective on 2024 and honestly things didn’t get much better as I previously mentioned. A few things went well and I only discovered them because I started writing about this post. Who knew?

Getting Surgery (on) My Ass!

I was glad that I got some time away from the job I hate, but the year started being a huge pain in the ass as I got a ischiorectal abscess¹ which put me in hospital for the first time in 20 years as it needed to be surgically removed! It started out as being something embarassing, then it make me super sick, then it got super painful, then the pain went away leaving discomfort and anxiety over a highly-plausible reinfection, then it became chill as I spent three weeks at home taking salt baths before becoming extremly expensive since surgeons and anesthesiologists aren’t free. Fun time.

I Hated My Job Even More Though I Did Some Cool Things

My job still sucks and underpays me but I did do some cool stuff at work last year. I started off by taking on a lot of responsibilities since a bunch of people were sent home for a bit. From June onwards I was forced to make a long-awaited mobile app and while it’s been a frustrating and suboptimal process, I’m glad that we got something working. I also learned far more SQL than I planned to in order to make the app possible. The app still needs a lot of work but it’s something to be proud of. It’s kinda hard to do that at $300/month.

Towards the end of the year I learned some PHP and started implementing online payments for the company. I made a shitty proof of concept that works but for some reason the bank isn’t activating the live key.

I also got to play around with Excel and generate a lot of useful reports.

So despite how shitty the year was, I learned PHP and SQL and I’ve realized that I actually enjoy programming. Still, I really need a new job. Have one for me? Send me an email at mailto:[email protected].

Got Incredibly Depressed For Most of The Year

A few things happened which led to me becoming incredibly depressed, paranoid and doomerist. One such thing is an inability to find a new job let alone get an interview, meaning thhat I’m absolutley worthless as far as the job market is concerned.

While it’s not as bad as it was, I feel like I’m trying to distract myself from those bad thinks. As they say, men would rather write blog posts than go to therapy. I wish I could afford it.

Though Some Thought I Was Helpful?

I decided to help out with Youth group to try and be a leader to young men². It hasn’t worked but my presence is appreciated.

The bigger thing was a few months ago when I was about to go to work but my mom called me telling me that my cousin got a stroke and I had to try and help him out as the nearest relative. I never did family shit which my mom was good at, but she wasn’t around so I had to see him in hospital, schedule tests and all. I don’t think I did much, especially compared to the guy who got him to hospital while I was contemplating an ambulence, but it apparantly means a whole lot to him. He seems to have had a huge change in perspective and even got married‽ I think I should let him pay me back despite how cringe it is.

I Travelled to Vietnam and Morocco

I got the chance to visit Vietnam in June and it’s such an amazing country. I haven’t finished writing about it yet but you can read my experience at the War Remnant’s Museum.

I also went to Morocco to see my mom who decided to retire and pursue a PhD. Again, I haven’t finished writing about it (the draft is still sitting uncommitted in my site’s repo) but you can read about the trains for now 🚆.

I Didn’t Program Much, Personally Anyway

I did, but I don’t have anything to show for it besides this site you’re looking at. I’m still making dozens of website redesigns as a coping mechanism.

I also made a QR code reader but I took it down because it was kinda shitty. I’m hoping to bring it back though.

Besides these there’s nothing from me. And I wonder why I can’t get a new job.

I Wrote A Lot

In 2024 I wrote 113 posts! They featured topics ranging from Zimbabwe’s new currency the ZiG to reading a Quibecois French language guide to add some quotation marks guillements.

I don’t have the analytics to tell you what was popular but these are my favorite posts:

• I Tried To Use A French Press. It worked ok.. The title undersells it—I love it!
• I Haven’t Dated Much in My Life. I’m Gonna Talk About It Anyway where I give my thoughts on umjolo—dating and relationships.
• This Website Must Be Studied For Science where I was befuddled by how the website still runs.

I Consumed A Lot

I didn’t bother tracking the books, movies, games and shows I went through since I was too lazy to write a post on them. But these are the things that stood out.

• Like a Dragon Gaiden and Like a Dragon Ishin! have me dozens of hours of fun as expected from the Yakuza series of games. I would like to play 8 and I heard they’ll be a pirate game as well?

• House M.Dhas been incredible to watch. The series is far from perfect and there’s no way a doctor would be able to get away with the stuff Dr. House does, but the banter is incredible. Just check out the shorts on YouTube. The best of the show so far has to be the last two episodes of Season 4. Simply incredible.

• Incredible people on YouTube. Watch the This Week’s Thing to learn more about them.

• EuroTrip was hillarious. I hope we get more sex comedies. The best thing about the movie was having Matt Daemon’s character sing about sleeping with the protagonist’s girlfriend behind his back in the song “Scotty Doesn’t Know”. Even funnier is that the situation in the song actually happened between two of the band members.

  Play Video: Scotty Doesn't Know

  I did it on his birthday…

Comparing Goals To 2024

This didn’t go well, but anyway:

• ❌Stop bike shedding my personal site—Despite even writing about how I will stop bikeshedding, I kept doing it.
• ✔️Look for a new job—I did look, I just failed spectacularly because I failed to get a single phone call.
• 〰️Take career development seriously—I didn’t do anything to intentionally meet this goal, but I did learn SQL and PHP which I think counts towards carrer development, right?
• ✔️Visit Vietnam—Wow, an unqualified tick for once!
• ❌Take my health and fitness seriously—I did when I got my ass boil lanced where multiple doctors told me to walk. I didn’t do much after that and I’m still a fat fuck.
• ❌Become more thoughtful—Trying to be thoughtful spiralled me into depression so I numb myself with distrctions like House M.D instead.
• 〰️Tidy up my digital life—I cleaned up my computer a bit but it’s a big job.
• ❌Actually get good with money—I’ve gotten even poorer and I might fall off a cliff soon.

So 2 successes, 2 partial successes and 4 failures—3/8 which is 1/16th worse than last year.

What’s Up For 2025?

Given how the past few years have gone, there’s no reason to expect anything different. But here’s what I want to accomplish:

• Having something to show. I have put in a lot of effort which has resulted in nothing tangible to show. Be it programming, writing (personal and elsewhere) or work. In 2025 I want to focus on making things I can point to and be proud of.
• Understand what I’ve been working on over the past 10 years I’ve been blogging and coding. Over the years I put a lot of work towards… Something. I should figure out what and maybe turn it into a podcast?
• Quit My Job. I’ve belabored the point but I absolutley hate this job. I want to leave it this year for something that has less bullshit and more money.
• Take my health and fitness seriously. My body is still kicking, but I’m worried that my health will rapidly deteriorate until I change course. I’d love to get ozempic but I can’t afford $300/month.
• Be a fucking adult. I act too much like a child—it’s time to grow up and become a man. More so needed given that my mom has retired and I’m nearly 30! A point where my background stops mattering and I become a total fucking loser.
• Go deep into my interests. My understanding of things is very shallow and I want to take time to learn things at a deeper level. One such thing is urbanism and how transit works so I can figure out how to make Harare into less of a shithole.

Not a lot of tangible things here but I think it would be better if I had focus areas.

So that’s my 2024. Here’s hoping that 2025 will be less worse. The next thing I want to work on is a post on how my website works right now. I planned for more features, but that didn’t happen so I’ll make a snapshot for now.