The ChangeLog – December 2024
Happy new year! We made it into 2025! Regardless of your goals for 2024, this is already an outstanding achievement. Good job everyone!
December, in theory, is a month for reflection. The month where you look back at the now passed year and reflect on your life so far and plan for the next steps. Personally, though, I find December a terrible month to do so.
For once, the holiday season is always busy, tiring and chaotic (for better or worse) and therefore it is a dreadful period for calm and rational reflection. Then, winter, with its short days, cold, sprinkled with seasonal blues, it is not a season that makes you shout, "it is time to sprint back into action!" After all, bears and other hibernating animals do not come out in the middle of it. They wait for spring.
That's why I rarely do any of that. My advice is to have at least another slow month. I prefer to reflect with more frequency (usually every season), especially around March and September.
Still, it is difficult to ignore completely a retrospective eye on 2024.
Some Wrapping 2024 Thoughts
Let's start with the intentions I set last January.
This is a big difference with January 2023: this year, I haven't set any expectations, and it's not in a positive way. For this year, it would be great if I could reach the highs of the good days in 2023. It's not that I believe I have nothing more to improve or nothing I'd like to do, make, wish for, or struggle for. It's just that I feel somewhat empty. Everything seems to have been swallowed up by the background feeling of meh.
In many ways, 2024 went better than 2023. I hit my bare-minimum requirement of going back to 2023 status: I wrote more just a bit, traveled more, I felt more in shape, I constantly went to the gym, and I even made some new social connections.
There remains a lot to work on, though. It was not a great year for my day job, and I am in a more shaky financial situation because of a significant increase in mandatory expenses. Moreover, that lingering feeling of meh is still with me. But I learned that there is a difference between joy and happiness and, while I cannot force myself to grab myself out of those joyless times, I can just decide to be happy in the day-to-day moments. And so I simply did it more.
Housekeeping
I wrote a couple of articles related to Bluesky. One to put down my thoughts on Bluesky November's surge in popularity and another to explain how I am trying to use Bluesky's ATProto protocol to add comments to my blog.
Following last year's blogging trend, I have made a new yearly post on the apps I used the most in 2024.
I am also progressively adding more "secret" slash-pages (such as /blogroll) to this website.
Reading
I have to say that I am a bit disappointed that I didn't complete a single book in December. I got further in three, but no completions. This will keep my total exactly on the planned goal of 32 books.
I should be happy to have reached my goal, but I set targets I know I can overshoot with some practice and I am 3 short than last year's 35 record. I could have done a tiny bit more.
Watchlist
Last year, I planned to watch 50 movies in 2024. I am glad to announce that I will end the year with a tally of 196! If you follow me, you are aware of my monthly lists. So thank you for keeping me company.
But the year is not over, yet. So let's look at December's Watchlist.
Look Back (2024)
Look Back is a short (59 minutes) anime movie by Kiyotaka Oshiyama based on the one-shot manga with the same name. On the surface, it is a simple story of two young girls who love drawing, Fujino and Kyomoto who lives as an hokikomori. It is Kyomoto's admiration for Fujino that brings her out of her room into a brief but powerful joint career in drawings and art.
This short film is as much beautiful as it is tragic and sad. And its shortness makes things worse. Because you would like to spend hours with the characters, but you only have a little time. You can see the parallel with the plot there, right?
Klaus (2019)
I was going through my Christmas movie watchlist and I've found this Netflix animated one. As you know, Netflix catalog is a mixed bag. But this time they probably produced one of the best modern animated Christmas movie out there.
Some characterization is a bit derivative, but the overall feelings, the humor, the art style and the pacing of the plot are really well done. Definitely one movie I would not be upset if my (hypothetical) son would choose to put it in a loop on the Holiday season.
Star Trek: Lower Decks
I cannot end this watchlist without my valedictory speech for one of the best things I didn't know I needed in my life. Star Trek: Lower Decks ends with Season 5. While it wasn't always perfect, it was a real treat for Star Trek nerds like me. I am gonna miss this bunch of weirdos so much.
Live long and prosper. 🖖
Everything else
- Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). My unpopular opinion is that this Star Trek movie is not as bad as they say. I think it is pretty solid. And I like Tom Hardy's work in it.
- A Very Murray Christmas (2015). I am a big fan of the "Sofia Coppola putting Bill Murray into hotels" genre. This is not a movie though. Still, a nice Christmas distraction (except for Clooney singing "Santa Claus Wants Some lovin..." brrr).
- Last Night in SoHo (2021). I saw a pretty divided opinion on this one. I belong to the "It is cool!" faction.
- La banda dei Babbi Natale (2010). Italian comedy Christmas movie. Meh.
- Bad Boys For Life (2022) and Bad Boys Ride or Die (2024). I decided to complete the collection. Bad Boys For Life is just okay. But I kinda liked Ride or Die.
- Red One (2024). LOL. I think it is so weirdly unexpected that it performs a full turn into the watchable side.
- Die Hard (1988). Mandatory December rewatch.
- When Harry Met Sally… (1989). Me and Gioia never watched it. I think it was due time. And it was nice (yes, a very slowpoke opinion to have).
Music
More AOR, more progressive and some random album. Still, no particular recommendation. Probably Feel the Heat by Nitrate hit my desired vibes more. Pretty cheesy AOR, but cool.
Gaming
So, I made the mistake of taking back my Steam Deck and I got sucked back into all my time killer games. Balatro, Vampire Survivor, Slay the Spire, Shogun Showdown and such. I also bought all the Vampire Survivor DLCs and now I have probably 100 hours of unlocking to do. Cool.
I also bought Hades 2 and I am so excited to play it!
By the way. I logged 30 hours in the last three weeks, so I now have something to blame for my "I didn't read a book in December" complain.
Conclusions
Wow. Writing during that unholy period between December 26th and December 30th is difficult. I think I ended up with a short post. But it is fine. As I said, December is for resting and connecting with our nature.
In the end, I am happy with how December unfolded, and now I hope January and 2025 will provide me with a renewed sense of direction. (It will not happen on its own, though.)
When you read this, it will be already 2025. So, once again, I wish you a wonderful New Year. We will meet, as usual, on February 1st to check out how the first 1/12th of the year went.
See you then! ❤️
Cover photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash