I don’t remember my days anymore.
It’s January 1st as I write this. If the FBI were to break my door down right now and demand to know where I was the night of December 17th, I’d have to check my journal. Anything past 36 hours previous is a fog of lived experience.
I blame routine. I don’t travel for work, what I do has little seasonality to it and the job consumes a very large part of my days. Sameness makes for faulty memory.
The problem started troubling me a few years back, and I wanted to do something about it. So I started my own kind of daily journaling.
I figured I’d share what I recorded in the past year, along with some of the whys and hows of it in case it gives you some ideas for what may work for you. At the very least, you can see what I’ve read and judge me for my choices.
Productivity as identity, not output
I figured that if I’m to record some data about myself, it should help me answer questions I’m interested in. Here are some I tend not to care about too much:
How productive was I in 2024?
How many pages did I write?
How many poems did I complete?
What was my writing income?
How many new subscribers did I get?
Here’s one I’m more interested in:
To what degree is writing a part of my life?
So, I have some numbers to help me measure that. It’s crude, but it provides at least some insight. I tracked the days I considered myself “creatively productive” throughout the year to give me a month-by-month breakdown:
A bit inconsistent, but roughly speaking, I wrote a little more often than I didn’t. I can live with that.
My reading, watching and listening list
Here you are. Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Books
Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brian
The Moonlight Chronicles by D. Price
Dune (The Graphic Novel) volumes 1 and 2 by Brian Herbert
The Real Deal: Field Notes from the Life of a Working Photographer by Joe McNally
The Soulforge by Margaret Weis
The Singing Bowl by Malcolm Guite
The Loneliness of Being a Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Strange Things Happen by Stewart Copeland
Murder on the Orient Express: The Graphic Novel by Bob Al-Greene
A Glass Half Full by Felix Dennis
Heroes by Stephen Fry
The Poetic Edda – the Jackson Crawford translation
Phantastes by George MacDonald
The Bad-Weather Friend by Dean Koontz
The Safe Man by Michael Connelly
Music to Raise the Dead by Ted Gioia (all but the last part; he’s not finished)
The Senses by Matteo Farinella
After Prayer by Malcolm Guite
Lilith by George MacDonald
The Battle of Maldon – J.R.R. Tolkien’s version
The Homecoming of Beorthnoth by J.R.R. Tolkien
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – J.R.R. Tolkien’s version
The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien
Short stories and poems
“Dietrich” by Don Winslow
“The Smoke of Gold is Glory” by Scott Lynch
“Merlin: A Poem” by Edwin Arlington Robinson
“The Dream” by Lord Byron
“The Fall and Rise of the House of the Wizard Malkuril” by Scott Lynch
“Saint Joan” by George Bernard Shaw
“Parable” volumes 1 through 3 by Sean Tucker
Miscellany
All the Sherlock Holmes stories
Excerpts from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A collection of Coleridge’s poetry
A handful of Montaigne essays
A collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry
Podcasts
Hysteria
Lost Hills (seasons 1 through 4)
Snap Judgment (several episodes)
The Candid Frame (several episodes)
On Taking Pictures (several episodes)
And I felt like I hadn’t read much this year. Okay, fair enough. Guilt trip over.
Life experiences: bullet journal style
Family & friends
In terms of family and friends, looks like I spoke to my parents roughly once a week throughout the year. (Really, it’s more that they spoke to their grandkid but let’s not split hairs.)
I also engaged in roughly one social thing per month, which is good, but next year I’m going to start volunteering. I need to get out more.
Places I’ve been
About once a month I was able to have what I’d consider a worthwhile experience. Sometimes less, sometimes more. This seems a bit low, but isn’t a surprise, considering my introversion. However, I do need to work on that. (See above.) There are, however, some highlights:
On January 15th, my family and I got stranded at an airport that was about an 8-hour drive away from where we should have landed. A storm caused us to redirect. So, we rented a car and drove through the night to get home. The roads were nasty, there were myriad cars in drifts and ditches, and we were running on no sleep. We stopped every 40 miles or so to relieve ourselves of the terrible airport coffee we kept in thermoses because we knew that on the roads we’d be on, there’d be nowhere to stop. I didn’t need my journal to remember that particular drive.
On January 23rd, my family and I started an innocent-enough game of Chutes and Ladders with my daughter. And then it wouldn’t end. It just wouldn’t. END. We hit it hard every night because I am a completionist and apparently, so is my daughter, but it still took us a week. The game resolved itself, but I forget who won and we don’t play that game anymore.
In April, we happened across a county park that has in its center a near-perfect recreation of the area in Oz where Dorothy landed. My daughter loved it, but she doesn’t yet know the story. We’re going to work on that this year coming up.
Personal accomplishments
I kept reaching out to my parents, even though it’s at times difficult. Even had a bit of a vacation with them in the summer.
Very uncharacteristic of me, I reached out to a couple of people I admire and asked for their advice on a few things. Amazingly, they all got back to me and were very generous with their time and expertise. Thanks, you all.
In terms of longer projects, I made a photo zine, produced three long-form poems, started a kind of digital mood/inspiration board and got back into calligraphy.
Personal setbacks
I tried to start a second issue of the photo zine as the first was very well-received, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I wanted to write more instead.
Tried to join a writing critique group. Was told by way of introduction to one of the members that basically I’m a crappy dad. Abruptly cut ties with said critique group.
Heard from a friend of mine for the first time in probably decades. Didn’t continue to keep in touch. Have to fix that.
I lost my rabbit to a fever in October. That was a very hard month. I tend to have strong attachments to rabbits; I feel like I understand them a lot better than I do dogs or cats. And Bagels was just the best. He was my daily hangout companion, and I was beside myself without him. We did, however, provide a home to another rabbit in need of one, and she’s been a great friend.
The Burnout
I don’t even remember tracking this, but I’m so glad I wrote these incidents down—otherwise I’d have no idea how common they were.
From January to March, I had two cases of mild burnout. They lasted for a couple of days, but then subsided after I took some time for myself.
I had a more severe episode in April that took about 2 weeks to fully resolve.
That same month I had a full-blown panic attack. I was sitting down but my Fitbit was telling me that I was doing heavy cardio.
I continued to have about one incident a month until a major breakdown closer to the end of the year. It was ugly.
Despite my full awareness of the risks of job-related stress and taking its silliness too seriously, these were almost all work-related. Difficult or no, this is something I’m going to need to find a way to fix going forward.
Conclusions
I suppose there are a few:
I’m reading and writing consistently, which means I need to stop whining to myself and others that I don’t have time for it. I’m quite obviously making the time. What I really want is larger chunks of time, which is another way of saying that I want to win the lottery.
I had some great experiences, but I still need to get out more. See more things, have more conversations.
I’ve got some unresolved internal stress that’s now starting to seep in and manifest problems in reality. It’s time I start taking that seriously.
Anyway, that’s my year and a bit of a look at my process for recording it. Thank you all for your support in the past year. It’s not a unique thing to say during this time of year, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I appreciate every time I hear from you. And for what it’s worth, if you’re looking for something worthwhile to start your 2025 reading goals, I found The Creative Act to be precisely as good as people say.
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