Attempting to keep up this trend from previous years ([2023](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2023/12/22/annual-review-2023/), [2021](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2021/12/31/opinionated-guide-to-virtualenvs/)), here's my annual review of 2024.
## Career and Personal Development
Perhaps the biggest change this year has been my job change. At the end of November [I shared](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2024/11/29/end-of-an-era/) that I would be moving jobs after 8 years as the CTO at [Filament](https://filament.ai). Of course there was a fair amount of activity leading up to this decision and I had a number of interviews before finally deciding to accept the new role that I'll be starting on Monday. I think I summarised my feelings about this pretty well in my [earlier post](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2024/11/29/end-of-an-era/) so I won't rehash it here. Suffice to say, I'm pretty excited about the new opportunity and for an opportunity to change a few things up.
In the mean time I've been doing a fair amount of reading and writing this year, with particular interest in how [ML models can be miniaturised and run on modest computers](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2024/04/20/self-hosting-llama-3-on-a-home-server/) and also looking at [fine tuning small LLMs for biomedical question answering](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2024/04/26/can-phi-and-llama-do-biology/). A couple of my blog posts have seen quite a lot of traffic and my post about how [LLMs can't do probability](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2024/05/01/llms-cant-do-probability/) got a fair amount of attention on HackerNews.
Like previous years, I've also done a fair bit of public speaking and [engagement with the academic community](https://brainsteam.co.uk/notes/2024/12/05/1733392287/). My highlight has been doing a number of lectures and seminars for a friend and PhD cohort-mate who is now an associate professor at Warwick Business school.
## Health
I think the biggest step-change for me this year health-wise has been [really coming to terms with the effect caffeine has on my anxiety](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2024/07/21/a-personal-experiment-with-coffee-walking-and-anxiety/). Its no exaggeration when I say that this really provided me with a quality-of-life improvement and reduced background levels of anxiety significantly. of course I still get anxious and worry about stuff, that's normal and human.
I've been restricting myself to 1-2 cups of caffeinated coffee or 2-3 cans of diet cola in the summer. The improvement has been twofold:
1. I am able to stop ruminating about whatever the biggest thing on my mind is at the time and enjoy being more present. Of course if I stop an activity and let my mind go quiet, the worry comes back. However, before the caffeine-boosted levels of anxiety could easily ruin my weekends and evenings.
2. I don't tend to get a feeling that "something is wrong" or "I'm worried about something but I don't know what" any more. When I do get it, it's usually a sign that the day before I might have overdone it with coffee or forgotten to switch out the caffeinated beans.
My physical health has plateaued this year as I've focused more energy on other things (i.e. career stuff). I've done pretty well at going for 20-30 minute walks most days this years and photographing the stuff that I've seen. I've not made as much progress as I would have liked towards losing weight or improving muscle mass. I have resolved to "lift more heavy stuff" in the upcoming year.
We didn't do particularly well on the food/cooking front this year either since we live very close to a lot of takeaway places and well within the service radius of Just Eat and Deliveroo. This is something I plan to fix this coming year.
## Hobbies and Interests
I've picked up a couple of new haobbies and rekindled some old ones this year. I was [lured into the world of meshtastic radios](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2024/10/19/flashing-heltec-meshtastic/) in October and have been slowly accumulating kit that will allow me to talk to other local radio nerds in the area. There's a pretty active scene here on the south coast and over Christmas I was getting pings from France, South Wales and the West Midlands.
In November [I attended a repair cafe](https://brainsteam.co.uk/notes/2024/11/09/1731166601/) and I was able to get my trusty Delonghi coffee machine fixed. After this, I signed up as a volunteer to join future repair cafes to see if I can help others to fix stuff too. I've not managed to get back yet but I'd love to go along as a volunteer at least once or twice in the new year.
I also purchased myself a [Digital Saxophone](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2024/12/8/3-weeks-with-ae10/) which allows me to practice silently (well with some clickity-clackity from the keys) and also play guitar and synth riffs on the saxophone. There's something brilliantly silly about playing The Final Countdown on a sax and hearing it come out sounding like a keyboard. I've not practiced as much as I'd have liked over my between-jobs break but I am hoping to build some sax practice into my new routines.
[I managed to read 14 books last year](https://bookwyrm.social/user/jamesravey/2024-in-the-books) which isn't too bad but I think I can do better if I spend less time doom-scrolling (and the reduced caffeine intake helps with that which is evidenced by the fact that most of my reading activity happened in the 2nd half of 2024). We are still retaining our membership at Cineworld allowing us to pop in and see lots of films. This year we saw quite a few but I've been a bit rubbish at recording which ones. My new job will involve more time in london which means more time spent on trains and thus more shows watched, books read and podcasts listened to.
## Holidays and Trips
We've done pretty well this year having managed to fit in a lot of mini-breaks. In March we [went up to Edinburgh](https://brainsteam.co.uk/2024/03/30/edinburgh-2024/). In May [we had a long weekend in the New Forest](https://brainsteam.co.uk/notes/2024/05/04/home-for-the-weekend_-passford-house-hotel-_newforest-.../). Later that month we spent a week in the West Midlands with my parents and did lots of day trips. In August [we visited Bletchley Park and the Alan Turing exhibit](https://brainsteam.co.uk/notes/2024/08/18/had-the-pleasure-of-visiting-bletchley-park-yesterday-.../) to celebrate our wedding anniversary. In September we returned to [the same place that we went to last year](https://brainsteam.co.uk/posts/2023/09/16/we-went-on-holiday1694878285/).
We also managed to see a number of shows and comics throughout the year including [Sarah Millican](https://brainsteam.co.uk/notes/2024/10/20/1729450243/), Jimmy Carr and shows including the West End production of Mrs Doubtfire, 2:22 and Peter Pan Goes Wrong.
---
When I started this exercise, I was convinced we'd had a pretty quiet year but reflecting on all that we've done and achieved this year reveals how busy we've really been and how much has happened.
## 2025 Goals
My new job which starts on Monday presents an opportunity to shake up my routines and hobbies a little bit and to try to introduce some good new habits. Rather than setting firm linear goals now, I plan to carry out some [tiny experiments](https://nesslabs.com/book) to see how best to make changes that fit our new lifestyle.
Some ideas that Mrs R & I have come up with so far include:
- Putting mobile phones out of easy reach when we're sat together at night so that we're not tempted to mindlessly scroll social media. If we need to do something specific on our phones (e.g. check our calendars or text a friend) that's fine but we must set a specific intention and we will check on each other if something is taking a while in case either of us gets "sucked in"
- Get into the habit of using my e-ink devices to read blog posts and news articles instead of looking at them on my phone. This should help me reduce the probability of getting "screen sucked" into my phone as above.
- Going for walks twice a day. Initially we thought morning and evening might be good but we have struggled to get up and go out in the dark and the cold so some iteration/experimentation may be required.
- More strength training - I do walks every day but I'm never pushing my body to build muscles (which use more energy and help me shed my dad-bod faster). I'm going to try and start doing high intensity interval training (HIIT) after work a few nights a week. This might be a good transition activity if I've just got off the train from London but equally if I've been home all day and I need to switch off psychologically.
- Hack cooking with lazy meals e.g. one pot and slow cooker recipes. If we can anticipate which days we are likely to think "let's just get a takeaway" and do the food prep the night before, we can hopefully reduce the damage here.
- We want to be less "flaky" in general. We are both suckers for cancelling plans at the drop of a pin. This is often due to anxiety or a feeling of overwhelm. For example, as an introvert if I have a lot on during the week I'll want to avoid people over the weekend. I don't know if there's an easy answer to this one but we can both try to encourage each other to stick to plans more.
- In a similar vein, I would like to try to meet up with more friends throughout the year. I'm generally quite good at being opportunistic about getting coffee or lunch but I think I could do better and I'd like to try and increase my own tolerance in terms of what social "overwhelm" feels like.
- Further improve my website's micropub and microsub integrations which will allow me to syndicate posts to the fediverse and bluesky and hopefully reduce the amount of time I am actively spending in either of those places.
In 2024 I was pretty good at blogging and micro-blogging (via my notes section) more frequently. I hope to use my website to document some of the progress and changes that we're making throughout the year.
Wishing all of you a happy 2025 and I hope to stay in touch with many readers. Please feel free to get in touch with your own thoughts, ideas and retrospectives!
