Goodbye 2024

December 19, 2024

Those close to me know that my long-term memory is… selective to say the least. I can't remember clearly what was my state of mind in January, or what were my projects as I made my first steps of 2024. So instead of remembering how I envisioned it at its start, I decided to retrospect on what it has been for me. It's also a way to publish some draft articles that never shaped how I wanted them to warrant a dedicated publication. Here, goes (something).

Health

I continued to work out almost consistently twice a week. Faltered a bit since November but I intend to go back to my routine. I even added a new kind of exercise with biking with a friend of mine. Very nice. A challenge this year has been balancing my professional activities and my personal ones, especially on the time management side of things. I'd like to invest more time to my two main hobbies, which are playing (and ever learning) the violin and working out. I enjoy them a lot and they help me a lot with my mental and physical health. But working a full time job prevents me from devoting more time to those activities right now. To try to regain a bit of time, I've decided those last few weeks to reduce my "passive screen time". Which is watching TV and scrolling on the inter-webs. It helps and I should keep working on this. It's really crazy the amount of time we can lose doing this without even realizing all the things we could have achieved had we been a bit more intentional with this time. Time is not money, it's much more!

Books

I've read a lot this year. At least compared to my usual pace. This was the result of a "knowledge quest" as I like to call it. The start of it all was the realization that humanity is on a catastrophic course. We can't sustain the way we live for more than a few decades at this point, and it's not desirable anyway because we've destroyed most of life on earth during the last few decades. Change needs to happen, but I wanted to understand first how we got here. Some of the books I've read on this quest:

L'hypothèse K depicts our current situation and opens doors towards a better one, just like Sagesse des lianes. Au bord des mondes was very difficult to read for me, because it's an anthropology book and I knew almost nothing about that before reading the book. From what I've understood of it, the author gives ideas as to what lead to our current way of life and proposes changes to anthropology in order to avoid its current pitfalls. Tools for Conviviality discusses the proper use of tools, and is very practical in giving ways to identify which tools empower us and which ones disempower us. This one spoke to me because I've been believing for a long time that many tools are too complex nowadays and we're just better off not using them if possible. With the effect of a gain of time in the long run, as well as a gain of peace of mind. I've been wanting to develop these thoughts in a dedicated post for a while. Maybe it will finally emerge in 2025 :P

The year is almost over, and I did not find the answer I was looking for. What I've understood though is that it's a very complex question… It may be better to explore potential solutions instead of trying to formulate a clear answer, which may not exist in the first place… The books I've read already hint towards better ways, and I'm planning on reading a lot more to examine many more pathways. If I'm convinced of one thing today, it's that we need a complete change of our values. We need to reconnect to nature, live with nature instead of against it.

Music

Music is very important to me, it always helps me during tough times and brings me a lot of joy during good times. I've kept on learning the violin and I intend to do so… For the rest of my life!! I'm now proud of what I can do with my instrument and playing it feels rewarding. The path ahead is very bright.

Of course I spend way more time listening than playing. Since this summer, I've been listening a lot to Aurora. She's a Norwegian singer and songwriter who creates very rhythmic melodies with touching lyrics about similar matters to the ones I've been reading about this year. She's very concerned about the way we live and has a very raw personality, which I discovered while watching some interviews. I think it explains why her music resonates so much with me. For a wider look at what I've been listening to, be sure to check out my previous post "A song a day".

Movies

As I've said, I've almost completely stopped watching TV, which includes YouTube, movies and TV shows. Those are very time-consuming activities from which I don't get much value because I forget shows within weeks of having watched them. Nonetheless, I've been to the movies with friends several times this summer. It's fascinating how any activity becomes more valuable when it's shared with friends. We watched some lesser known movies, and I liked them because they seemed deeper than the average Hollywood super-hero production. I particularly remember Typhoon Club, a depiction of what life was as a teenager in Japan some 40 years ago. They were bored, like trying-to-bend-a-spoon-with-my-mind bored. It reminded me that we're never bored anymore. I'm convinced this is owing in no small part to our glowing screens permanently embedded in our pockets, and our hands. Even though its characters may seem bored, Typhoon Club is not boring. I liked how spontaneous and genuine they felt. At times, unsettlinq even. Go watch it if you can, or if you're bored with the average Hollywood super-hero production.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

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