I meant to have this ready way, waaay sooner. A whole month sooner. It's hard to say exactly why it took this long, I think I'm just not used to big projects such as this.
This was perhaps too ambitious to just take on after not doing much for a while. It was a lot of writing and editing, and I even wanted to make images and GIFs for it. Alas, I couldn't hack it, and I'm not wanting to procrastinate into February, so no fun pictures. It is a crying shame.
So. 2024, done and dusted. What a year, am I right? Looking back on the year, it always feels like everything happened and nothing happened at all. It's a weird feeling. I figured it'd be fun to step back, look back, and take stock of how my 2024 was.
Early 2024
At the start of 2024, I was still pretty new to Neocities. I was spending my spare time in class working on my site and browsing other people's sites. I remember how it felt back then. I'd stepped out of the mainstream, hidden away in a quieter corner of the world wide web. It was the most fun I'd had on the internet in a long time. It felt really good. I suppose I've gotten used to being here by now, but it still feels really good.
I journaled pretty consistently around the start of the year. From December 29, 2023 to January 11, 2024, I wrote in my journal every single day. It's interesting going back and reading what was going through my head back then. I was writing about stuff like my opinions on different varieties of black tea and my plans for the spring. I remember my head always felt a little clearer after I wrote.
It made me decide that I should try that again, writing every single day for however many days. My goal was to do it until the end of winter break back then. This year I've written everyday throughout all of January, which I'm pretty proud of.
A lot of my time in early 2024 was eaten up by school. Not just in the sense that it was what I was doing for most of the day, but also that I needed a lot of time to recharge when it was over. Even if the day was uneventful, just being there was draining - walking from room to room all day long with a heavy backpack will do that to you, I suppose.
I never agreed with the notion that your high school years are the best years of your life. The idea of your life being the best it'll ever be so early on is super depressing to me. In my case, they weren't even that good. The school year was always stressful and exhausting. I spent all my weekends recuperating and conserving energy for the next week of school.
But, last year, I had something big to look forward to: graduation.
Reflections on Graduating High School
I think I was excited and fearful for graduation in equal measure. School was a monotonous slog for me, an endless cycle of stressful and restless days, and I was excited to leave that behind me. On the other hand, it'd been a cycle guiding me for as long as I can remember, and I'd always known what would come next because of it. When it ended, so would that certainty.
I'd also lose access to the high school library and ceramic kilns. I think the thing I regret most is not taking more advantage of those. Towards the end of the semester, I was struck by the idea to make ceramic gnomes, but not just garden gnomes. Gnomes for all sorts of environments. I had so many ideas all of a sudden, but by then I'd already squandered so much time in my ceramics class doing a whole lot of nothing that there wasn't enough time to make even one of these weird artsy gnomes. I'm still kinda kicking myself over it.
I was always so tired. There were a lot of things I wanted to do, and could've done if I put my mind to it, but by that last semester I just didn't have the spirit for it. It felt more like a job I hated and wasn't allowed to quit instead of the magical coming-of-age experience that'd been advertised to me my whole life.
But I think the worst part about those four years wasn't any particular thing that happened to me, but a more mundane horror - the fact that it was all utterly forgettable.
I started dragging my feet a bit towards the end, but aside from that, I was a model student. I had good grades, never cut class once, I was well-behaved. I did everything right. But when the day came for me to walk the stage and get my diploma, it didn’t even feel good. The only thing that felt good was the fact that it was over.
A while after that, I had this horrible vision of the rest of my life being like that. Doing everything right on paper, but feeling utterly miserable inside. Living life on fast forward because I couldn’t stand being where I was, while never actually taking steps towards where I do want to be. Those four years passed like nothing, and I was barely changed by them.
That’s the thought that scares me more than anything else – wasting my life. It’s easy to fool myself into thinking I already have after I wasted my high school years, but I don’t want to think that way.
High school is over. From here on, the direction my life takes is up to me. Even now, it's a bit hard to wrap my head around that. But I'm excited to be an adult, even if it'll be hard. It's comforting to picture a future where I have a handle on this whole adulting thing and have taken my life entirely into my own hands.
To me, that's much better than the carefree image of high school that I was always told to expect.
My 18th Birthday and Journey Into Being an Adult
I didn’t do much on my 18th birthday. Mostly, I hung out with my cats and had a good dinner. The exciting stuff came after my birthday, because a couple weeks later, I applied to be a library volunteer. About a week after that, I went to the library to do some volunteer work for the first time.
It was nice, volunteering. Volunteers mostly help with the events the library does, so there were a variety of things I did there. Sometimes it involved interacting with people, sometimes it didn’t. The first time I volunteered, I had to help a group of kids with a craft activity. I’d been nervous, but talking to the little ones turned out not to be so bad.
Often, I’d have a craft prep task that I could just do by myself. I got to put in my earbuds, put on some music or a podcast, and just get to work. I worked with perler beads for the first time there, which was an interesting experience.
Sadly, the entry into legal adulthood is not solely fun and games. Unbeknownst to me, when I turned eighteen, my provisional driver’s license had expired, and it only came to my attention after my bank notified me that my proof of identity documents were no longer in order. Somehow, I never noticed that it said “provisional” at the top of it and that its expiry date was my eighteenth birthday. Not my finest moment.
From there, I had a great bureaucratic battle ahead of me to accomplish two things: renew my driver’s license and reopen my checking account. The driver’s license was easy enough, since all I needed to do was book an appointment and wait a million years. It wasn’t really that long. I had my new driver’s license by the end of September.
The checking account, on the other hand, was a nightmare and a half to hash out. The bureaucratic struggle for that lasted until the start of November. I had to make a lot of calls to the bank to figure out what was going on, and they had a nigh-insufferably complicated “Press one for such and such” process at the start of each call. It was sorted out eventually though, and I came out on the other side with a bit more experience in bureaucratic bullshit.
I’ve got more of that ahead of me in the coming months. I have to learn how to job hunt and figure out taxes soon. Urgh. I’ll handle it, of course, but ain’t no reason I can’t complain while I do so. I can multitask.
Misery Summer and Awesome Autumn
In the months that I didn’t have my driver’s license or my checking account, I found myself slipping back into the same state of mind I’d been in almost every summer before. I was in a state of waiting for something to happen or for the day to be over.
I had all the time to myself I could want, but I’d forgotten how to do anything but waste it. The big projects I had so much fun dreaming up just didn’t come to fruition. Weeks would pass me by with barely anything to show for it.
I thought the summer after I graduated would be different, because I wouldn’t be going back to school in the autumn. No reason to conserve my energy, no reason to hold back. But yet I still found myself back in that pit, lost in the day-to-day drudgery, taking no steps towards any of my creative goals. Trying to muster up the energy to do anything was unbearable, but eventually doing nothing at all became even more unbearable than that.
In the autumn months, I ventured out more and went to so many places I’d never been before. There’s a restaurant next to a pond not too far away from me, and I tried fried shrimp for the first time there. As it turns out, I like their fried shrimp a lot. I remember sitting there with my shrimp, looking out at the pond with its ducks and turtles, thinking to myself, “This is the real world. I’ve seen so little of it.” Later that very day I saw a woodpecker at the park, too.
The next month, I went to the movie theater by myself for the first time. The movie I saw was The Wild Robot, which I really enjoyed, but a couple of funny things happened to me while I was there.
The first thing happened while I was buying my ticket. I had to talk to someone behind a counter to do so, which I was handling well until my social circuit shorted in the middle of the conversation. My objective then was to end the interaction as soon as possible, so when he asked if I wanted any concessions, I just said no. He gave me my ticket, and I went to the showing room utterly snackless.
The showing room was a bit funny too. The pre-show was very obviously meant to cater towards younger kids, since it was almost entirely cartoons and puppets talking about arts and crafts and things like that. I didn’t want to pull out my phone, but I also didn’t bring anything in particular to read, so for about ten minutes I was stoically reading library pamphlets in the dark by myself. I thought that was pretty funny.
The day after that, I drove to my grandparents’ house. I’ve visited them many a time before, but I hadn’t made the drive myself before then. I needed to go because I’d forgotten my water bottle there a couple days before, but I ended up sticking around for a while just talking to them. It was really nice. We talked about our cats, mostly.
I also found a cool little farmer's market nearby me. I've been there twice, and I already have a good collection of business cards from my visits there. It's nice to go there to look around for treats and good produce. My only grievance is that most of the vendors have TikToks and Instagrams for their wares, and I really don't like TikTok and Instagram. That's a me problem, though.
All this is to say that things have been looking up for me. My life feels like there’s more to it than just watching videos on the internet now. However, I can’t deny that it’s still a big part of my life, and I wanted it to have a spot in the report.
I’m no good at being loud and announcer-like, even in a text-based format, so I suppose I’ll just calmly welcome you all to–
THE CHAVEZ AWARDS 2024
Creatively inclined as I am, the media that inspires me inevitably becomes part of my creations, and thereby part of me. I thought it would be nice to shine a spotlight on five particular things that inspired me in 2024, and give them each a unique accolade that has no legitimate professional prestige. Just for fun, you know?
First up is Weirdest Piece of Media to Resonate With; a strange story with strange characters all wrapped up in a strange medium. It doesn’t fit the conventional mold of a story, and it doesn’t want to. Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, this funky piece of art crawled into the synapses of my brain and made itself at home here. Please give a big hand to...
The Living Gnome Saga!
It's very hard to articulate just why these videos stuck with me. I’ve already made an honest attempt, but it bears repeating. The clever folks of Radio TV Solutions likely didn’t intend to tell a tragedy of longing for what can never be, but despite that, I managed to find one in it. That funny little Source Engine gnome with his broken Uberduck voice found me on the precipice of great change in my life, and reflected a part of me I needed to see. And yes, technically I saw it in late 2023, but I spent a lot of early 2024 writing feverishly about that damn gnome. It counts for this year.
The second award is Most Listened-To Podcast. It might seem like a rather plain accolade, but before 2024, I wasn’t a big podcast-listener aside from a few audio dramas. When I was young, I just didn’t have the attention span for them, and until recently I just hadn’t found any that I enjoyed. Now, granted, I still don’t listen to too many podcasts, so the winner of this award doesn’t have too much competition, but these are my awards and my rules, and this award is going to...
The Where Do We Begin? Podcast!
It’s another creation of Radio TV Solutions. I’ve been a big fan of theirs this year. The podcast was started in 2018 and meant to be supplementary material to their livestreams, and in early May I decided to start from episode one. Something about it just meshes really well with me; it might be the fact that thus far, there have been no ads or sponsorships, which is always a breath of fresh air. It might also be that it’s Radio TV Solutions, and I already enjoy what they do. It could also be the fact that it’s just a group of friends having fun and shooting the shit together. Whatever it is, this podcast has been in my ear through many hours of doing chores, and kept me company while I watched the seasons change. I think, during those miserable summer days, I needed it.
(Fun fact, I'm listening to it as I type this right now.)
This next award is Video Game I Should Have Played Sooner. Like Where Do We Begin?, it came out in 2018. I’m still not sure whether or not it would have changed the trajectory of my life back then, or if I just wasn’t ready for it yet. Either way, I learned about it late last summer, and it feels like a crime that it was kept from me for so long. This award goes to...
Wandersong!
This game feels like it was made for me across time and space. Almost everything is exactly to my taste, with gameplay that’s challenging but not too difficult, a charming visual style that uses colors creatively, an excellent soundtrack complimented by sound design that’s just as good, and the cherry on top: a poignant, heartfelt story that delves deep into its emotional core. Going back through it with the developer’s commentary unlocked only deepens my appreciation for this game, and it deeply inspires me to create from the heart like Greg Lobanov did.
Next up: Most Underrecognized Album. I’ve never been one to be a superfan of any particular band or artist, and before this one, no album’s release has ever been so much as a blip on my radar. This one came out on a Monday morning, and suddenly I understood what everyone else was talking about when they celebrated an album release from their favorite artist. For this reason, this award is earned by...
Possum Pirate’s “Bedrooms, Bathrooms, Backyards”!
I’ve talked about Possum Pirate before. It was purely by chance that I found his music, and he doesn’t have a big audience, but I am so happy that I’m part of it. This album has some real good examples of lyrical genius that I can’t help but be floored by every time I listen. It also makes me realize that you don’t need to make a super-polished product or have a subscriber count in the millions to be happy doing what you do on the internet. To me, that’s far more inspiring than shooting for the stars.
This last award is also music-related, being Most Thematically Profound Music Video. This one snuck in at the end of the year, and found me in the midst of a creative slump that’d been lasting for a couple of weeks. It’s not something critics will rave about, but that’s okay because I can do that myself just fine! A big round of applause for...
Tom Simons’ “The Internet’s Getting Worse”!
A cynical-sounding title, but what good is art if we’re never challenged by it? I think, in times like this, a mite of cynicism can be good for us. It’s very tempting to push all our troubling thoughts to the side to avoid dealing with them and pretend everything is good, but it’s not an optimal solution, is it? Sometimes you just have to see the world around you for what it is, even if it isn’t that good.
What really speaks to me about this music video is that it’s not perfect, and it doesn’t want to be. It’s a product of Simons having a really rough year and wanting to make something about it; it’s pure artistic expression. It’s very refreshing to me, in a world where a lot of music and television and whatnot can feel like a product rather than genuine-hearted art. I think that the world could do with more things like it.
Late 2024
After the summer heat died down for the year, I’ve just been taking it easy for the most part – enjoying many dinners and the cooler weather. I started working on this Year in Review in the last few days of November, and now here we at the end of January. Maybe if I do another one of these this year I’ll start a bit earlier, or take some notes for it throughout the year. Not sure yet. We’ll see.
Now we come back to a promise I made to myself back in late 2023. I’ve never really been one for New Years resolutions, but I suppose having one semester of school left to go had me in the mood to shake things up a little. I told myself back then that 2024 was going to be my year of “generally doing better”. By the time 2025 rolled around, I wanted to be a bit closer to the person I want to become.
Have I succeeded? Well, I’d say so. My problems aren’t all magically solved, and I’ve still got a long way to go, but I’m a little better than I was a year ago. I’ve done a lot of things that I hadn’t done before, and I’ve got more control over how I spend my time. It’s been more small steps than huge strides, but a lot of little steps can take you very far.
Expectations for the New Year
We’re already a fair bit into the year. I’ll be honest – 2025 could be a bit of a nightmare. I’m real good at keeping my cool, but it very much feels like the world is the plaything of some impossibly powerful people at the moment. Not much I can do about it except buckle up, I suppose.
In the meantime, I’m still gonna keep trying to get better. There’s a lot of bad habits that still need breaking. I figure that a resolution like this isn’t something you drop when the next year rolls around, and it isn’t something that you can reasonably be done with within a single year. As I said: little steps.
I’m going to get a job sometime in 2025 – that’s non-negotiable. I’ve been lollygagging for too long and it’s started to chew holes in my brain.
I’d like to get back into doing creative things more regularly. Writing, drawing, learning Blender, learning guitar – there’s a lot to choose from. I suppose choice paralysis has kept me from doing any particular one of these things. Maybe something cool to do is use this blog to do a monthly report of my creative endeavors.
I think having a Big Thing to focus on working towards for the year is a pretty good way to motivate myself. I started off easy with “get better in general”, but I think 2025 can have a more solid idea: freedom.
I'd like my life to belong to me a bit more. I'd like to shed the apathetic teenager that I've been for far too long and become something new and strong. Again, probably not something that can be done within one year, but it's a good goal for me to have, methinks.
It's a pity I wasn't able to make this look as nice as I first pictured, but I'm happy that it's finished anyway. Really, the purpose of this review was to prove to myself that I can finish a big project like this.
