2024 Reflections and 2025 Plans

Good afternoon and Happy New Year all!

I hope you all enjoyed your New Year's Eve whatever you were doing -- mine was quite calm. First rewinding back through December, here's my media roundup:

After listening to The Retrievals last month, I realised there was a bunch of Serial Productions shows released over the last few years I hadn’t listened to and started making my way through them. The first one I listened to was The Good Whale, their most recent show about the release of a killer whale who had been living in captivity back into the wild, the first time this had been attempted. I didn’t think it was quite at the level of quality of most of its companion shows – there was nothing wrong with it, but also nothing standout. I then listened to The Improvement Association, an exploration of allegations of election fraud in North Carolina and the racial divide in voting. This admittedly isn’t the kind of thing I’d usually listen to and I similarly didn’t have any standout feelings about it.

Earlier in the month I found myself locked out of my flat until night one day and had to kill time, so ended up going to the cinema to see Conclave, a fictional depiction of the process of the election of a new Pope and something of a political drama. I loved it. Some stories don’t need to be films any more than they need to be books or TV shows or plays, but Conclave feels like a very intentional celebration of cinema. The cinematography and sound design both particularly stood out to me, and despite not planning to see it or to go to the cinema at all that day, I found myself totally absorbed. One particular twist was mind-blowing and I’ve been asking all my friends to watch it so I can discuss it with them. Highly recommended!

Next I watched Getting Lost, a fanmade documentary about the TV show (my favourite) that I’ve been anticipating for a while released in celebration of its 20th anniversary. It’s very much something for existing fans and would only be so interesting to anyone who hasn’t seen the show, but I loved it. There aren’t many opportunities to indulge in my love for the show after all these years and I missed the original wave of fandom when it first aired, so the whole experience of anticipating the documentary was a treat. I do think it suffers from the creators having so much content that it’s largely a compilation of interviews over having much other insight or narrative, but that’s a great problem to have. It’s also wonderful to see how many of the major people involved in the show’s production got involved out of their enduring love for it. I’m very much planning to rewatch and write all the Lost analysis rattling around in my brain one day, just probably not for a while yet. I would recommend it especially to WTC fans for how it deals with lots of similar themes and topics.

Finally, I read Closer Baby Closer, Savannah Brown's most recent poetry collection, over the last few days to make sure I reached my goal of reading twelve books in 2024. On the whole, I've been a bit underwhelmed by Savannah Brown's poetry (compared to the writing in her YouTube videos, which I think is stunning). There were only a few lines in the collection that really connected with me and most of it felt quite opaque. I enjoyed it most of the three collections of hers I've read, but can't readily recommend it.

For videos, I wanted to shout out Game Maker's Toolkit's Developing series where he covers developing and releasing his own game on Steam, which has finally come to a conclusion. Also, Daijoububu, the only figure collector I watch who helps me keep in touch with my love for that hobby, and GoNorth Japan, a guide who makes great, thoughtful videos about North Japan.

To reflect on the year as a whole, my biggest personal goal for 2024 was simply to focus more on my health and wellbeing. A few months ago I started running, more as a personal challenge than with any long-term commitment in mind, but I've come to really enjoy it and it's something I'm trying to do very regularly and continue to improve at now. I've been working on my diet, getting enough sleep and going to therapy. A big thing was changing jobs -- I loved my old job, but the stress did take a toll on me and I knew there would be a limit to how long I could stay, which ended up being two years. This year I got my first job in mental health, something I'm really proud of, and it's also considerably less stressful, which has really helped me achieve these other things and give a bit more time to all the other things I like doing. I had my writing physically published for the second time ever at the start of the year in the Ipse Facto Phoenix Wright zine. I was interviewed live on stream by a fellow Higurashi fan, another first and step outside my comfort zone. I submitted my poetry to a few competitions for the first time in many, many years -- another hobby I'm giving more time to again. I also gave teeny little bits of input into a few exciting projects which I can discuss more later in the year.

I spent a bit of time volunteering at an awesome local jazz club this year as part of a general goal to do one big New Thing that scares me every year (the year before, I did a Learn to Row course). I didn't end up sticking with it because I remembered how much I hate hospitality work, but it was a really cool way to connect with my community, learn more about an amazing venue and hear some great music, and it's now one of my favourite local spots. I was lucky enough to see a bunch of artists I love live this year: RAYE, IU, Arlo Parks, Ichiko Aoba (second time), Miku (third time!), XG, and Joe Hisaishi (also second time, unbelievably). I also saw Spirited Away live at the theatre. I'm very lucky to live in London. I threw my first ever big adult birthday party with about 35 people, went to two new countries (Portugal and Greece -- I adored Athens), and a new part of the US to visit my best friend (Santa Fe). Some of my favourite media I found this year was Society of the Snow (now one of my new favourite films and books) and the wonderful final series ()':) of Sound! Euphonium.

Finally, I released a video...! Okay, so one of my goals this year was to release multiple videos, which I did not achieve. This is obviously disappointing, no doubt for my audience as well as me. I am, truthfully, just very happy and relieved I managed to upload at all. I definitely struggled with motivation working on the Japan video for one reason or another, but it was a personal project I absolutely wanted to follow through on, and I'm glad I did it.

On the whole, I'm not too sure how to regard this year. I think broadly I'm leaving it in a better place than I did 2023, and certainly years before that. To be slightly vulnerable, after long-term struggles on-and-off with my mental health, I've finally reached a sort of stability I'm frankly not used to, or quite sure what to do with. As always, as with all of us, I did go through difficult things this year, but on the whole, it's been perfectly okay -- and I've had a lot of opportunities and experiences I'm deeply grateful for. I'm on a precipice where looking forwards is finally as much about improving as it is about fixing. I've focused very much on strengthening the stability I have by, as mentioned, prioritising my health and wellbeing, good habits, routine, and so on. That's obviously important to maintain going into 2025, but I'm trying to slowly reintroduce and juggle the things that make me feel excited and passionate as well as just secure. That's a long and self-indulgent way of saying that I do feel more motivated to create than I did a year ago, and I've been putting as much of the time and energy I've found that I can into the Umineko videos, while splitting it with all these other things. I'm about halfway through episode 8 of Umineko now, and will imminently begin transforming the 37-and-counting pages of notes I have into the skeletons of videos. I've also got the bonus sound novel content, the manga, (rewatching) the anime and the stage plays to get through, and won't give any time estimates, but as always, keep an eye on my updates.

I'll likely release the Umineko videos back-to-back to ensure I get both out this year over anything else, but I have quite a few other videos I'm so excited to work on as soon as possible: Chainsaw Man, Ace Attorney, and some slightly more experimental ideas that have been knocking around in my mind for a while, amongst many others. Something I'd really like to try this year even just once is either streaming or interacting with you guys live in some other capacity, maybe a Twitter Space. I also think it would be nice to do some sort of book club perhaps with a sound novel when I'm done with Umineko, but that idea is in its infancy.

One thing I can say for sure is that there are video ideas for the channel to fill many, many years to come, it's only time I'm lacking in. As the obligatory absent YouTuber check-in: no, I'm not going anywhere, and I still truly love doing this. Simply, thank you from the bottom of my heart for continuing to support me in it.

I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful 2025.

Speak soon!