A little 2024 year in review…

I’ve been enjoying reading other people’s year-in-review posts, so I thought I’d post a few musings on the 8760 hours that comprised 2024.

There were some cool highlights. Among them:

— A new book deal! I wound up switching agents and publishers over the last year or so, but in April we announced a 2-book deal with Norton. Big Time (current title) will come out in early 2026, and The Golden Hours will come out in 2027. I love writing (and writing long) so I have been reminding myself how grateful I am to have the opportunity to create more books.

— In a totally non-commercial vein: I wrote a handful of sonnets I like. I continued my year-long project of writing two lines a day, thus producing one sonnet a week. Most are eh. Some I like. I’ll likely do a post of my favorite sonnets from 2024 over the next week or two.

— I didn’t really have a banner reading year but I read a lot about my current obsession: the ancient earth. This started with my obsession with non-homo sapiens human species, but then has extended back. My current interest: the end-Permian extinction (when 90 percent of all life died out), and then the Triassic, which was when the earth recovered and life re-evolved. At one point it rained for a million years. I am also obsessed with the Economist’s annual Holiday issue (I tend to read it over the holiday break), and they actually had an article on the Triassic this time around. Bliss!

— Spain with my big boys. This was a trip with a lot of memories, from a horse-drawn carriage ride in Seville (smelling the oranges the whole time!) to a little paella restaurant in Rondo, to bike riding in Madrid. While the weather wasn’t wonderful, we survived that and the upgraded seats home were just the cherry on top ending to a great adventure.

— Paris with my daughter. A college friend suggested we go see Taylor Swift in Paris, so we did. Taylor was exciting but it was also fun to see art, eat crepes, cruise on the Seine, and enjoy gorgeous spring weather. She and I had fun at the Olivia Rodrigo concert over the summer as well. I took my 17-year-old to NYC for a long weekend and enjoyed that, particularly our sunset boat cruise and seeing MJ the Musical.

— Fall leaves. I went to Maine twice this fall and really enjoyed the scenery — including seeing the Northern Lights in Portland.

— Singing in the B-Minor Mass. This has been on my List of 100 Dreams for years, and this year it finally happened. I listened to all of Bach this year as well, and so getting to learn this piece even better was a fitting capstone to the project. My church choir sang Brahms’ Requiem, which was also cool.

— I hosted a “progressive” dinner party in the spring where we moved to different places for different courses.

— I ate at my favorite Mexican restaurant many times.

— I went to many botanical gardens. I met friends in NYC and went to the NY Botanical Garden in April for their orchid show. Then I went to Phoenix on a speaking trip and got to see the desert landscape in their garden — totally different, but amazing as well. I went to Longwood many times, and also to Chanticleer, which can be done in a lunch time trip in spring/summer and is usually gorgeous.

There were some lowlights as well:

— Excruciating back and nerve pain. About a year ago I suffered a back incident (with corresponding nerve pain down my leg) that left me unable to walk for a week and then unable to do basic things like empty the dishwasher for a while. My life doesn’t stop, so this meant I took a family trip to Disney five weeks after that happened. That was…hard. Recovery has been fitful though I do feel significantly better now. I wish I knew why. I was doing all the “right” back exercises/physical therapy exercises before the episode, so it’s not like they prevented it.

— Some family travel. The 5-year-old has trouble getting to sleep at home and on the road it is even worse. So Disney (February) and Barbados (over Christmas) both featured some very late nights with a child throwing a tantrum. Not cool. Especially when you’re paying through the nose for the privilege! Bedtime battles in general are just tedious. I do know that “this too shall pass,” as my older kids don’t throw tantrums at 10 p.m., but this is a parenting stage I wish would go a little faster.

— Norovirus. Enough said.

— Child behavioral challenges. Will just have to vague-blog here.

— Not making it to Scotland. Longtime readers may recall our canceled flights, driving home from Newark at 3 a.m., etc. Good times. However, there is always the Bronx Zoo!

In other news: I had several longer Before Breakfast episodes run since I last posted links. On December 18 I welcomed Gretchen Rubin to the show, and she talked about habits, happiness, and more. On December 25 longtime listener Amanda shared her morning routines and her “pre-planning” rituals. On January 1st I did a solo longer episode in which I talked about time tracking — why and how to do it.

Please give them a listen!

Also, please consider signing up for my annual Time Tracking Challenge. From January 13-20 a great many of us will be tracking our time together. I’ll post my time logs on this blog. You can sign up here to get daily motivational emails from me.

Photo: Spain!