After reading Xuanwo’s 40 questions to myself (inspired by Steph Ango’s 40 questions to ask yourself each year) I decided to have a go myself. Steph Ango also has 40 questions to ask yourself each decade but I’m not up to that just yet. Here goes…

1. What did you do this year that you’d never done before?

I visited Japan, with my girlfriend and 9 month old (at the time) son. We visited for 2 weeks at the start of August, for a friend’s wedding in Kamakura, and travelled to Kamakura, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima and Tokyo. It was stiflingly hot (up to 39 °C in high humidity), but unbelievably beautiful. The sky was so blue, the shrines so red, the trees so green, everything had an ethereal dreamlike quality. For a westerner who had never travelled further east than Marmaris, Turkey, it was like travelling to an alien world, and then travelling back to Europe was like being thrown out of paradise into a semi-hell. I love Japan.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions?

I didn’t consciously make new year’s resolutions at the start of 2024, but I vowed to quit my photonics job and start my career in machine learning. I achieved the first part in May, but have struggled with the second part.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No, thankfully.

5. What cities/states/countries did you visit?

Japan (Kamakura, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Enschede, Bath, Barmouth, Austria (Zell Am See), Germany (Munich), Paris

6. What would you like to have next year that you lacked this year?

A job in the Netherlands.

7. What date(s) from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

5th May, when I quit my photonics job.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Just about holding onto my sanity and hope for the future as an unemployed semi-full-time dad with an uncertain future.

9. What was your biggest failure?

All the little bad habits, vices and procrastinations that caused my to be a lesser partner, father and person than I could have been.

10. What other hardships did you face?

Unemployment and lack of a secure future is hardship enough.

11. Did you suffer illness or injury?

No.

12. What was the best thing you bought?

MacBook Pro M3 (I think I actually bought it towards the end of 2023, but moving from Windows to Apple has been amazing), also the Sony WH-1000XM4 noise-cancelling headphones, for studying in the library.

13. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

My mother’s, who has been an invaluable support to me and my little family.

14. Whose behaviour made you appalled?

Many leading British politicians.

5. Where did most of your money go?

Rent, bills, and that one big Japan holiday.

16. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Anki.

17. What song will always remind you of this year?

  • Sunday Morning Coming Down – Kris Kristofferson (and more importantly the Carson McKee cover)
  • Detectorists – Johnny Flynn, from 2023, when we listened to this a lot during my girlfriends pregnancy and during the first few months of my sons life.
  • Take On Me (MTV Live Unplugged), one of the most beautiful songs that I have ever heard, that had to wait over 35 years since the original release to be born into this world.

18. Compared to this time last year, are you: happier or sadder? Thinner or fatter? Richer or poorer?

I am happier, thinner, poorer.

19. What do you wish you’d done more of?

I wish I had spent more time with old and new friends.

20. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Biting my fingernails, drinking, scrolling Twitter and Youtube.

21. How are you spending the holidays?

Japan, visiting family, skiing in Austria.

22. Did you fall in love this year?

I fall in love every singe day.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

For a while this year I did hate someone, who I thought had tricked me and lied to me, making me a lesser version of myself, but I don’t hate them anymore.

24. What was your favourite show?

The Detectorists, which is so wonderfully British and wholesome. We watched it in 2023 but I can’t think of a single show I watched in 2024?

25. What was the best book you read?

Paco et Mozart: 16 musiques à écouter

26. What was your greatest musical discovery of the year?

Dawes, Broudenwij de Groot, Fei Yu-ching

27. What was your favourite film?

Society of the Snow

28. What was your favorite meal?

The Japanese wedding meal.

29. What did you want and get?

Nothing. I didn’t want anyTHING, and didn’t get it, so I’m happy.

30. What did you want and not get?

I job, I got niks.

31. What did you do on your birthday?

I can’t remember, I never liked my birthday so don’t really like celebrating.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Being more present and calm, and less distracted through the daily storms of caring for a small child.

*33. How would you describe your personal fashion this year?

Developing.

34. What kept you sane?

My son, and hope for the future.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you admire the most?

Elon Musk.

*36. What political issue stirred you the most?

The brutal Southport murder of those three young girls and the British establishment’s response.

37. Who did you miss?

My grandparents, my father, and my old friends that I have lost contact with.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Muhammed.

39. What valuable life lesson did you learn this year?

Try to be kind, to yourself and others, even when it doesn’t seem rational.

40. What is a quote that sums up your year?

“Go and clean your bowl”