A reluctant roundup of 2024

I published a 2022 roundup. I didn’t publish a 2023 roundup; it was a shit year for me.

I’m also hesitant to publish a 2024 roundup because it has, once again, been a shit year for me. But I have already written about much of that. So in the spirit of self-love and positivity and a renewed sense of hope ignited within me by the days getting longer in the northern hemisphere, I will now force myself to list all of the things I did on the internet (and beyond) in 2024.

In 2024 I published 24 blog posts; 11 were written as part of my job for Sentry, and 13 were my own. I published more personal, life-based posts than usual in 2024. Whilst being vulnerable on the internet is scary, these personal posts resonated with a lot of people. I received countless emails and DMs from friends and strangers on the internet who had experienced or were experiencing similar things in life, and who found comfort in my vulnerability. One person, in particular, has become what I consider a good friend who I turn to in moments of internal crisis. (You know who you are.)

In 2024 I delivered my talk Entertainment as Code a total of five times. I travelled to Norway, Toronto, London, Middlesbrough and gave the talk online. It was a really interesting process to give an evolving conference talk throughout the year, whilst the underlying project I was speaking about simultaneously evolved. I would strongly recommend delivering a talk multiple times. After all, musicians and comedians and theatre performers don’t just do a thing once and move on to the next thing.

I continued to live stream on Twitch regularly, until I took a forced break in Q3. Streams this year focussed mainly on building my silly text-based community game p4nth3rworld, which is what powered this year’s conference talk. The project culminated in a hack week in August 2024, where I streamed for 25 hours across five days working on the game. I’m not sure if I will continue working on this much more into 2025, despite there still being a sizeable backlog of feature requests. In fact, I am ruminating on a blog post about when and why to archive a project. Stay tuned.

In 2024 I launched a newsletter: weird wide web hole. Each issue contains four links and some words from my brain at the time. I sent 50 issues and gained 350 subscribers. The open rate averaged at 50%, and retention at 90%. I came up with a formula that made building and sending each issue quick and not stressful, and something I would like to receive. The most important thing I wanted to focus on is to enjoy sending this newsletter, and after a full year I still do. The weird wide web hole will continue to open up every Thursday in 2025; subscribe here.

Towards the end of 2024 I started thinking more intentionally about how my career might evolve over the next few years. I’ve had some good conversations with some very clever people, and have started exploring Developer Relations through a more learned and strategic business lens. Two blog posts I published in 2024 were on this topic (Defining paths to business value in Developer Relations and Stop writing SEO-first! These are the 4 types of DevRel content (plus their Leading Themes) and have been very well received.

I’m still working through another huge cross-stitch and I’ve been reading more. I had to forego my drum lessons for the last part of 2024, but I’m starting up again this month. And in 2025 I’m determined to actually produce that new piece of music that I’ve been promising myself since March 2020.

As I approach 40 this year, I am beginning to understand why people say “life begins” at 40. As time goes on, I learn more about myself, and the world, and how to interact with it more intentionally and more calmly; I have fewer and fewer opinions about things I cannot change. Whilst my priorities are centred on health, wellbeing, family, friends, and peace, I am starting to feel pretty well-equipped to navigate this weird industry landscape without burning out, and perhaps, you could even say, thrive.

As my friend Daniel Roe said on Bluesky:

you're thoughtful and very funny and don't hide what you really think

I think you don't think as highly of yourself as you deserve though

In 2025 I’ll try, Daniel. I’ll try.