So Farewell Then 2025
So farewell then 2025. Had some serious health worries, made some stuff, did some performance, made money, had some fun.
Not the best year, suspect health things tend to trend down in the second half of life.
Good though, and promising more good to come.
Made Stuff
Made 11 Wordcloud Tarot shows.
The target is like 25. So about half as many as target.
Some good, some great.
Made 1 Observers show
Not enough. The target is like 6.
Made 0 main Starship cartoons.
Meh.
Target is for 2026 to be the next one anyway really.
I do have a script and all the assets needed to animate it, but I have become unhappy with the script and failed so far at rewrites.
Should get it done next year at some point I’d hope.
1 Life-Logger app released
Overshooting the target of zero there, surprise new entry in the projects list
Did Performance
Played two Loopy gigs
Just a tiny birthday party and in a camping field with friends.
This is probably about the target number really. It’s nice to play now and then but couldn’t be monthly or anything even more frequent.
Didn’t feel like either went great. Health issues affecting performance plus nerves
Just one with video of any kind.
Added a couple of great songs to the playlists, need to practise more really.
Performed 2 improv shows.
At the end of a Hoopla class and the end of a self-organised group class.
They were good fun.
But having to book a course every eight weeks means constantly churning co-players and long gaps where I don’t get around to it or it was all booked up.
Tried to get a more permanent group going…
0 new improv group meets.
Trying to get some sort of indie-group off the group rather than just short runs of classes with new people all the time.
We found a group an booked the room but didn’t get most of the actual people to turn up. Need to presumably meet more people up for that sort of thing.
So there will be new improv class starting in Jan.
A new show in March at least.
Health Stuff
Recovered somewhat from whatever that weird fit was at the end of last year.
NHS still has me on some sort of list I think, appointment might turn up next year. Last contact with them they were suggesting maybe November.
But the private treatment gave me the MRI which showed nothing weird and post-fit symptoms have been reducing.
Experimented with eating meat to see if that helped.
Ate Meat
Tried eating meat for a month to see if it reduced the post-fit symptoms. Maybe it did? Tried vegetarian again and maybe it got worse?
Hard to tell with intermittent symptoms and a terrible memory.
Decided it’s more likely to do good than harm (to me, entirely harm to the animals obviously), and eat meat till the end of the year.
While I’m better, I don’t really feel fully recovered enough to want to change things so more meat next year I think.
Drank far less
One of those symptoms is that booze tolerance dropped to like zero. Very rarely had more than four pints in a day this year and very rarely more than one night a week.
1 fractured wrist.
Much high number than the target there really.
Tripped over a guy-rope and fell onto the wrist.
Did two days of the festival and the drive home thinking it almost certainly wasn’t broken and only confirmed it was when I got home and the hospital put it in a cast.
Made money
Paid off the mortgage
It’s been interest-only for 20 years so a big old lump sum payment that I never really expected to be able to make. Expected to have to sell and move at the end of the mortgage term.
But surprisingly the stocks ISA got high enough to pay it off after all, so I did that.
Cash-flow ruined by that and the bedroom but should start to feel a bit richer next year.
Had Fun
Bought a car/micro-camper
Bought a van to do up as a micro-camper, and did a temporary rush job of that conversion myself while waiting in the list for the pro to do it.
Then the pro gave himself a health criss the week it was booked so I took apart my temp job and only got another temp kit-job in it’s place.
Went out in it like four times during that and then broke my wrist and couldn’t really use it or improve it.
Then had to take it apart even more to try and figure out where the ad-blue hole was.
I will do a proper permanent job of the floor and walls and ceiling and adjustments to the kit-job to make it the nicest it’s been so far during the spring next year.
My assumption that the prior conversion into a van and for wheelchair-access meant the microcamper conversion was half-done already turned out to be false.
If I buy a new one, it’ll be one that has never been wheelchair adapted.
But it’s going okay. Only scraped it once so far.
Went to 3 festivals
Fewer than aimed for or booked, but I broke my wrist and had to cancel the second half of the summer.
- Small World
- Private friends camping thing
- Good Vibrations, where I broke my wrist.
Bitfest
Went to a conference about money and computers and fringe decentralized social media and it wasn’t as boring as you might expect and felt pretty much like a festival.
1 bedroom built
Exactly the target number! It’s lovely. Took 3 times longer than I’d hoped and 50% more money than I’d planned for really.
Still improvements to make but they will be incremental and gradual over the coming year or two now.
Media stuff
Rewatched all of Buffy
Broken wrist meant I had to sit on the sofa for a month doing nothing really. I re-watched all 200 or so episodes of Buffy for the first time this decade.
What an achievement in TV production. Amazing show.
I’ll watch it again next decade maybe.
Book of the year
Not that I read a huge amount. Hopefully more next year.
Fiction
“Outland” by Dennis E Taylor, and actually also his “Not Till We Are Lost”
Non-Fiction
“Broken Money” by Lyn Alden.
TV Show Of The Year
Think “Severance” was the most remarkable show I watched this year, with “Trek, Strange New Worlds” also being great again.
“Pantheon” was a pretty great cartoon, haven’t seen the second season yet.
Next year 2026
So, what for next year?
- More than 12 Tarot shows,
- About six Observers shows,
- The main starship v0.4 cartoon,
- Along with the pre-release of the main starship app
- Improvements to the Exocortex app,
- An improv class/show or two (one starts Jan, show March)
- An new improv group?
- Play a couple of Loopy gigs/open-mics,
- Finish the bedroom stuff,
- Don’t get sicker,
- Break zero bones,
- Fix the camper in the spring,
- About six festivals,
- Maybe a foreign holiday,
- Try and read more