2024? A fine year!

please note that this is solely a review of my personal life, not of anything more serious or important, thank you 🙏🙏🙏

I shuffled the deck. I upset the apple cart. I flipped the script. I metaphorred the image. I remixed the song. Kinda.

Yes, 2024 is over and with it the beginnings of my radical, revolutionary plans to overhaul my static, stultifying, sludgy life.

How did I do?

Well, I think it’s fair to say that it was a modest, though not total, success!

Yes!

Of the five resolutions I set out on this blog on January 1st of this year, I’ve comfortably and seriously succeeded in two of them, utterly failed at one, essentially failed at another and arguably catastrophically (but also arguably not) failed at a third. So, although that’s only a definite yes to two out of five, that’s 40% minimum which – if I remember correctly – was considered a pass (the lowest possible pass) mark when I was at university, so I think this means that, yes, I passed 2024 and get to continue on to 2025. Great work!

Those resolutions were:

• Submit more poems for publication – this is the one I most categorically failed at, as although I did do perhaps slightly more writing in 2024 than the previous 12 months, I don’t think I actually submitted a single piece of poetry for comment or potential publication at any point. Whoops!
• Study more efficiently – yeah, this is the other one that I don’t think I did great at… I continued some language classes through the first half of the year, but since June I don’t think I’ve spent a single minute trying to learn anything difficult or serious or anything that could – academically – improve my future life. That said, though – linked to the below bullet point – I did actually do some studying for more recreational slash practical purposes by completing multiple non-academic courses – one in improvisation/performance, one in writing and performing stand up comedy and also a series of various free and paid for courses in baby maintenance/baby first aid etc etc etc (because I acquired a baby this year (through legal means), but I haven’t mentioned that yet here because a) it wasn’t one of my formal resolutions and b) by January 1st I’d already done all of the active action required to facilitate acquiring a Summer 2025 baby (if you don’t know what a person with a penis has to do to get a cash-free baby nine months later, then you really need to spend more time on Wikipedia and less time on the “literary lifestyle blogs” of repressed mental health poets!))
• Perform live again and, ideally, regularly – I absolutely fucking smashed this one out of the park, doing just under 30 different short performances across the second half of the year. Here’s a link to a video of one of them… I have more gigs booked in for 2025, but sadly I utterly failed to get any performances in during my two month stint at the end of the year in Canada, but it’s OK, I think, I think that’s ok…
• Remain unmedicated – in hindsight maybe this as a resolution wasn’t necessarily the healthiest thing to attempt, but this was a second one I was able to fulfil through the year, too… Yes, the year was both medication and big problem free – I’ve been very functional, very stable, very (dare I say it) healthy… I wept a lot at beautiful books and movies, and though I felt some of the usual lows I feel that are often close to being too much, this year, I don’t think, ultimately, they ever felt like that… I also felt lots of great, positive, warm emotions in response to the birth of my child, which was a great relief. I was scared I’d feel nothing. But I didn’t. I felt a lot. Apologies for anyone who is bored by the narrative turn of me not being apathetic towards my child (note: the baby is cute, which might make everything a little easier?)
• Be a more authentic version of self – well, this didn’t really go anywhere tbh, though I don’t think I repressed myself any more than I have in previous years, but I also don’t think I was much freer, happier, more coherent… Then again, getting the performance practice started and focusing on that was rooted in a decision to acknowledge that this was something that I maybe needed to be doing for sense of self reasons, despite not doing any live performances (aside from a handful of live poetry readings between 2017 and 2019) since 2010. So maybe I didn’t fail utterly on that one!? Maybe half marks? Just under half marks? Which would bring me up to 50% (or just under) for the year, which sounds VERY respectable to me!

Yes. All very good!

–///–

So, overall, how was it as a year? For me, the poet and blogger scott manley hadley???

Not bad!

I have to say it was “not bad”!

I didn’t do any exciting or adventurous travel like in 2023 (that said, I spent almost 3 months in Ontario, though, so that’s not-London… and I did have a loooooovely long weekend in Venice, which has positives other than not being where it isn’t… and I visited lots of places around England, which isn’t always awful, I suppose….), buuuuuuut I did see some great films (highlight being Sing Sing) and TV (I did something I should have done years ago and finally watched The Sopranos through to its conclusion) and – of course – I read some really excellent books. But you – dedicated TriumphOfTheNow.com reader that you are, already know that!

Annnnnd, of course, I gained two other wonderful things: my afore-mentioned baby (known on this blog (and my SoundCloud account) as BB Whamathan) and an as-yet-unboxed theremin.

It was a more than adequate year, yes!

Did I get any more books published? No. Did I improve my Spanish fluency? No. Did I socialise slightly more than previous years? Yes. Did I maintain an exercise routine and a more healthy lifestyle? Yes. Did I do anything to expedite moving out of London again? No, and I’m now in a position where I’m more committed to being there for the next half decade or so (at least) but – and it’s a big but – I am beginning (14 years after moving there the first time and two years after moving back there four years after leaving) to build a non-shit life there, maybe, perhaps, I hope… It wasn’t a perfect year. But it was a long way from terrible and a long way from miserable.

So, no, it wasn’t as good as 2018 (my best year), but the improved extracurricular activities (performing regularly and baby) outweigh the best-in-life travel experiences of 2023 to mean that 2024 – dare I say it(!) – may actually have been the second best year of my life.

Would I live it again, if I had to? Maybe I would, yeah. Maybe I would.

It’s certainly something to build on. Something to live from. Yes.

Thank you to everyone I shared part of 2024 with – I’m sure I’ll see most of you again next year!

🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌