This is a little overdue as we spent the New Year period aboard a cruise ship, sailing the South Pacific and unplugged as much as possible. On the flip-side this has given me a little more time to reflect on the year that was and how it might shape the year ahead.

Job

I started and finished the year working at Rex. Whilst I am more or less doing the same thing, structural changes at the company have reduced the size of my team to one (i.e. me). I’ve been taking on more of the product management responsibilities for the products I oversee, acting as a ‘company of one’ within the organisation. I have some challenging ambitions in this space which will hopefully play out in 2025.

Travel

The family travelled to the UK at Easter for my sister’s wedding. It was a hectic three weeks back in the ‘motherland’ visiting with family. The kids are both old enough now to have lasting memories of the experience so we spent a week in London doing all the tourist stuff.

Since the UK has decent EV charging infrastructure we hired a Tesla Model 3 (arguably too small for all of our luggage). The kids thought it was awesome - I was kind of ‘meh’ about it (the car itself, not EVs in general).

It was a great trip but I’m not in any rush to go on any more long haul flights for while (especially with kids).

Health

I wanted 2024 to be my ‘year of health’. I’ve never considered myself to be ‘unhealthy’ and I’m reasonably fit, but I’ve been heavier than I’d like for the past 20 years and wanted to slim down a bit in time for my sister’s wedding.

Through a combination of consistent exercise and more considered diet I managed to get down to around 80kg in time for the wedding, and then have been hovering between 75-80kg since April. I honestly don’t know the last time I was under 80kg - maybe University, but I never really used to weight myself in my younger years.

I’ve had recurring pericarditis for the past 5 years, so this year I finally started to see a cardiologist to help manage it moving forward. First action point was to lower my cholesterol - my levels are within an acceptable for the average Australian, but as soon as you see a cardiologist they want it to be significantly lower.

In an effort to help this I went onto a plant-based diet - something that I have done before and don’t have a problem maintaining. It has also assisted in maintaining a healthy weight, so win-win.

With the weight-loss I decided to do something I hadn’t done since University - take up running. I’ve managed to get up to running 5km, participating in my local Parkrun on a semi-regular basis. My next goal is 10km, however my distance goals stalled in November when I managed to contract pneumonia and have had to take it easy whilst I slowly recovered.

I’ve not spent much time cycling this year, partly due to time commitments, but also I’ve found that it causes my pericarditis to occasionally flare up. I’m hoping that the rest period at the end of the year has been able to play a part in rehabilitating this.

Tech

My relationship with technology went on a bit of a rollercoaster ride this year. In the first part of 2024 I became a little disillusioned by Apple products and, with the exception of my work, tried to use simpler (or independent) non-Apple alternatives - both hardware and services. I could easily dedicate several blog posts to this (I already have drafts of varying completeness written) but ultimately I came full-circle and decided to go all-in on the Apple ecosystem, with a number of key purchases of ‘premium’ products.

I’m still forming a clear picture of what my relationship with technology looks like and can see this continuing into 2025.