My 2024 Annual Review
2024 was a wonderfully eventful year! There were many highs, some lows, and many opportunities for growth - here are a few of my thoughts:
What went well
Continuation of 2023 Travels | At the risk of sounding terribly cliché, I had some truly stunning experiences all around! I brought my total country visit count to 51; revisited and gained many new acquaintances and friends from my grade 6 teacher, to artsy types at Afrikaburn; and got to do some proper roadtripping with my childhood best friends among many other things.
Skiing in Georgia and Japan || Best skiing and post-skiing ever, with many lovely people too!
Catching up with everyone in SA || Some profound moments with family and flashbacks from the past – Pete Quinn, you legend!
Afrikaburn || The FLOCK 🐑 – truly lovely people! I already miss them dearly.
Namibia || A magical country. I’ve been to many places, but the landscape here truly left me gobsmacked.
Nordics || Full-on family travel with the SB (Indonesia) Crew, saunas, and just a smidge of Northern Lights.
Reconnecting with people | As part of resuming my career, I made an effort to connect with people and was pleasantly surprised by not just how many folks I still had connections to, but also how these relationships have continued to help me out in more ways than one. My project in Kenya with M-KOPA happened because of this, and traveling to Australia happened because of this. Even my first independent consultant contract I signed with GoodParty happened because of this! It’s wonderful to feel connected - and it certainly doesn’t hurt to see how just taking an interest in others helps out.
Progressing with piano | I set an ambitious goal – completing the intermediate track on SimplyPiano and learning Für Elise, which I didn’t meet. But, if I failed at all, then I certainly failed upwards since made immense progress and clocked >250 hours of practice. I’ve gone from no music literacy to, well, being able to sight play basic pop songs. I also have a good understanding of how little I know, but it’s incredibly inspiring to see the road ahead. Lastly, I found some healthy flow states while practicing the piano and have been really musically inspired overall this year.
Small start at independence (work, writing) | Work-wise, things have been tough. I don’t feel like I’ve made the progress I wanted since I haven’t found a suitable role this year. However, I’ve taken small steps toward trying things differently. I managed to sign a contract for consulting work in December – woo! – and I’m working on getting my website and some articles up and running for the new year. So, small steps!
Better skier | Not something I specifically set out to do, but I did some of the most fun and technical skiing I’ve done in my life this year. The pinnacle was ski-touring Mt. Yotei in Japan, which included a >1600m elevation gain in a day and skiing down some properly scary areas of the mountain. But I made it back in one piece! I also got to ski in Georgia, Slovenia, Austria, Canada, and the US all within the span of 4 months - pretty incredible!
What didn’t go well
Circumspect job hunting | I know it’s not strictly accurate to measure progress toward getting a job in the binary “have a job/don’t have a job,” especially knowing how many steps are in between and how much of the outcome is driven by luck – but the fact remains, I don’t have a role. Yes, I did technically get an offer, and yes, I’ve been somewhat picky to my detriment, but the end result is the same. Evidently, there are lessons here, which must be either a) I need to be less picky or b) I need to be willing to take more risks. Otherwise, I’m giving myself an overly constrained channel, leading to where I am now. I do feel like I’ve put in the work and have been quite proficient at networking, so I need to inspect other parts of my strategy. On the note of risks, however…
Narrow framing | I said at the beginning of my role search I wanted to try things differently, but I haven’t grown my scope or truly tried to take any risks. I read Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act when I first returned and I talked a lot about meeting people from different backgrounds. But ultimately, I still played it safe when it came to thinking about my next career move. I wanted a “Director of Data Science role in a small to mid-sized climate-focused firm,” which is very narrow and basically a carbon copy of my Komaza role. I want to say that this was encouraged by the Job Search Council(JSC) process – and I’m sure people would argue that I misinterpreted the intent – but I can’t help feeling that going through all the steps narrowed my framing. I feel mission-driven and care about what I do, but I also need the confidence and vision to try different paths to supporting my goals.
Confidence | I figured out fairly early in the job search process that confidence influences perception, which in turn affects how I feel about events more than any objective “good”/“bad” outcome. If I’m confident, even a “bad” interview can be reframed as an opportunity or opening for something else. If I’m not confident, the same event sends me into a spiral. I’m aware of this, but I haven’t been as consistent as I’d like in proactively managing my confidence and want to do better. At some point, I had the idea of creating a “confidence workout regime” to build this up, but I never followed through. I want to overcome this, or simply stop overthinking.
Speed of movement on personal projects | Not a new area, but still a persistent one. I have the poor habit of delaying “medium importance” tasks, which then seem to drag on forever and create more mental burden than necessary. I’m just not great at making decisions in some areas, and I end up missing the boat, or making things more difficult than they need to be. I want to get past this, execute on important projects, and move on without getting caught in endless deliberation.
What am I working toward next year
Proactively managing confidence → I want to feel like I’m in charge. I don’t want my mood on a particular day to drive how I act or react. I want to move from feeling like a passenger in my life journey to being back in the driver’s seat. This might take some counseling, and that’s fine, as long as I can move forward toward this goal.
Putting myself “out there” | Get scared → Not just writing, but publishing. Not just learning music, but performing. Being okay with less-than-perfect and mastering the act of putting myself out there. Doing things that scare me and take me out of my comfort zone is where I grow, but I haven’t done that enough. I want to combat this stagnation and grow!
Mastering playing in keys, playing songs by ear, composing → This is my fun goal. I’ve enjoyed learning music so much this past year that I want to keep the momentum going. I even saw a friend practicing with a band earlier this year and – to be perfectly honest I’m definitely tempted to try jamming too!
