2024 Revisited

December 27, 2024

Introduction

2024 was one of those years for me. So many had happened, yet the year felt constant, sometimes even stagnant. Something has to be done about this.

Why not take the full revolution of earth around the sun as an opportunity? I have identified 4 strands of achievements and efforts in my life at the end of 2024. Let’s look at them one-by-one.

System

2024 was a year of innovation in personal system-making. I started organizing my digital life with Johnny Decimal on 2024-01-09, and organizing my brain by journaling with tiny notebooks on 2024-01-18. Approximately 240 pages were written; 1,660 files were organized and archived according to 170 unique Johnny Decimal ID’s.

In Obsidian, I wrote 543 notes with 753 links, categorized with Johnny Decimal ID’s, 365 of them being daily notes. These notes contain a total of almost 100,000 words, in which are tasks, logs, and records that help me to organize and plan every day and each strand with confidence.

I sent 100 emails and received 1,900 of them. 300 new passwords were managed with KeePass. Roughly 30,000 website visits were counted. My digital heritage, or pile of trash, continues to grow.

Language

I continued to study Latin and Japanese in 2024. At least 20 hours was spent on reading Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, and at least 80 spent working on Minna no Nihongo. These hours represents extracurricular commitments independent of institutional instruction.

I started using Anki for vocabulary development. 1660 items were newly added in the Japanese deck and 670 in the Latin deck. I reviewed these cards for a total of 71,870 times in 335 days, occupying 135 hours of my life. Among the hardest for me were aestās aestātis/summer for Latin, 急行/Rapid(Shinkansen) for Japanese, and kasi/plant, leaf for Toki pona. The easiest card for me was nōlō nōlle/to not want in Latin, which is scheduled to repeat on 2026-08-15.

Independent study

I read and worked on a number of books this year. Among the most memorable are:

Calculus, for 60 hours; Chemical Principles, for 45 hours; Seminar VI: Desire, for 45 hours; Understanding Analysis, for 25 hours; The NRSV Bible, for 25 hours; Trans Philosophy, for 15 hours.

A lot more time was committed to reading on minor texts. Despite the substantia level of commitment, every hour felt effective.

After the completion of my training on 2024-02-08, I have been shifting at the Hey Sam program at Samaritans for more than 80 hours, working on ethical suicide prevention. I have also continued psychoanalysis myself, completing over 30 sessions within the year.

Despite my impacts on the MWH series of courses starting to fade, I have spent approximately 50 hours on teaching students in-person, most of them being interdisciplinary Science-English classes.

Summary

Approximately 700 hours were meaningfully tracked in the system, with clear starting points, progress, and goals. It’s not a bad number. It’s 8% of the entire year. The system has been working, and progress has been made.

My goal for 2025 is not to make this number bigger. Tracking loses meaning and effectiveness if the percentage become excess; commitment and involvement will start to fade. The focus will not be the number. Like photos, numbers represent the lived experience, and the humanity in experience will forever be my focus.