2024

Last year, instead of my usual annual bullet point summaries, I wrote a long form post to sum up the year. It was my way to compensate for the low number of post I’d published in 2023. Given the number of posts I’ve published in 2024, it’ll have to be long form this year as well.

Without further ado, here’s my 2024 in 10 minutes or less.

The Site

Let’s start with the low number of posts. Including the one you’re reading now, I published exactly one (1) post in 2024. And a lot of this post is just shameless copy/paste from last year’s summary post.

The reason for my lack of writing is simply that I’ve had absolutely no desire to write. There are a lot of topics that get me fired up, like climate change, artificial intelligence, and how internet dating at 46 is a nightmare. But I didn’t feel like writing anything about any of that, and over the years of writing, I’ve come to realize that forcing myself to write is a very bad idea. So instead I opted for the easy solution: Don’t write¹.

I’m not sorry.

Will we see more posts in 2025? I doubt that, I even had to force myself to write the post you’re reading now.

The Books

So what did I do with all the spare time I saved by not writing? I’ve read a couple of books.

As part of my A Book A Month project, I read a total of 21 books, which the observant reader will note is a lot more than a book a month. One of the reasons for this is that I’ve been cheating a little; some of the titles are comic books, as I plowed my way through the entire The Boys catalogue, and the first two Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files collections.

In addition to The Boys, I also read, among other things, three James Bond books by Ian Fleming and Frank Herbert’s amazing Dune (which I read every summer). I also had a go at Witch King by Murderbot author Martha Wells, but it just didn’t sit well with me, so I abandoned that one.

All in all, 2024 was a good year for the written word.

The Video Games

For the first time in years, I’ve had short burst when video games have actually managed to keep my attention for more than 10 minutes.

BeamNG.drive is great for just driving around aimlessly, or wreck some havoc. Counter-Strike 2 works well for anger management, but I’m not playing online and the bots are remarkably stupid, so it’s been a couple of months now since I fired it up. Planet Coaster gives me a feeling of Theme Park nostalgia, while Railway Empire does the same thing for all the transportation games I’ve played over the years.

On the top of the list, however, we find Pacific Drive, which is something as rare as an somewhat original story, and I love the visual style and the general atmosphere.

But does this mean I’m back to my old gamer-self, the guy who spent countless hours in front of his computer? Well, no. I played Pacific Drive for less than 20 hours, Railway Empire for 5 hours, and Planet Coaster for 4 hours. Back in the days, this could’ve been the time I spent gaming in a week, not a year.

The Pictures

This year, like the previous 12 years, I’ve been taking and posting a new picture every day: A Picture A Day. Many of them are of my kids, or other people, which are only available behind a private login. But here are a few public highlights:

As I do every year, I strongly recommend that you also start to take a picture every day. It’s great of remembering things, even the things you’re trying to forget. Yay?

The Physical Health

Here’s what my Garmin Forerunner 745 has recorded about my physical health in 2024:

• I took 3 047 576 steps, totalling 2 482,52 kilometers (1542.6 miles). I average 8 347 steps per day, which is about 2K short of what I’ve read is the recommended number of steps. Fun fact: I average only 30 more steps per day this year than I did in 2023. That’s a walk to the bathroom and back.
• I slept an average of 7h 9m per night, which is down 8 minutes from last year, but still an acceptable average. I usually feel rested when I wake up, but it wouldn’t hurt me to push the average sleep time to 7h 30m, or even closer to 8 hours.
• My average sleep score for a given week is rarely below 75, which means I’m getting I’m sleeping fairly well by Garmin’s standards.
• I had 101 sessions on the rower, which is down 4 sessions compared to last year. I covered a total distance of 500 kilometers (~311 miles). My goal has been 3 sessions per week, but I’ve usually only managed 2.
• My weight fluctuated a bit this year. My lowest weigh in was in January at 70,1 kilograms (154.5 pounds), while my max weight was in July at 76 kilograms (167.5 pounds). Right now I’m at 73,5 kilograms (161 pounds), which is 1,5 kilograms above my weight the same time last year.
• My average resting heart rate this year has been 47 beats per minute, the same as it as in 2023. I’m not quite sure how this is calculated, if sleeping is considered resting, for instance.
• My average stress level in 2024, on a scale from 0 to 100, was 28. Garmin uses a stress rating measured in 25-unit-intervals, and 28 is in the low end of “low” stress level. The measure does not, however, differentiate between good and bad stress.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with my physical health right now. I have, after all, managed to push it to 46, which was the average life expectancy for males in Norway in the 1850s. Good times.

The Energy Drinks

One somewhat interesting tidbit - at least from my point of view - from 2024 is that I stopped enjoying energy drinks.

One day in October, I simply grew tired of them, and haven’t had one since. I’ve been drinking them for years, never more than 5 cans per week, but still a notable amount. Back in 2015, I went all in and started to write energy drink reviews. There’s even a tag. But everything eventually comes to an end, and 2024 was the end of energy drinks for me.

Do I feel any different? Can’t say that I do, but based on everything in the ingredients list on your average Red Bull can, getting the energy drink monkey off my back can’t possibly be anything but a good thing.

The Mental Health

I’m pretty much back to my (good) old, emotionally flat lined, pre-divorce² self. It’s not like I don’t have emotions, but I rarely have high peaks or abysmal lows. The rage and bitterness I felt whenever thoughts surfaced of the should-haves and could-haves of the divorce, and the years that led up to it, has been replaced with frustration and annoyance. And I very much prefer that to the fury and acidity.

That’s about all there is to say about my mental health, really. And for 2025, it’s hopefully “steady as she goes”³.

The Perspective

Hi, there! I’m Vegard, a white, middle aged, heterosexual, cisgender male, in fairly good health both physically and mentally, with a sound economy, who live in Norway. Every day when I read the news, I’m reminded how amazingly lucky I am to have drawn the golden ticket in life.

This, of course, doesn’t take away my right to complain. One of the reasons why man has made it to where we are today, is our constant complaining, and our never-ending drive for harder, better, faster, stronger! This will also be our downfall, however, but that’s a dystopian entry for another day. I try to keep my complaining to a bare minimum, though, mostly because I very rarely have anything to complain about.

The point I’m trying to get through, in my own, convoluted, incoherent way, is that compared to sizeable chunk of the citizens of Planet Earth, I’m living the good life. That’s something I try to appreciate every day, because life could suddenly happen.

The Future

Last year, my wish for 2024 was that it would become the least eventful year so far in my life.

On a personal level, it’s been pretty uneventful, and for that I’m thankful.

On a global level, however, things have not been as quiet. We saw even more extreme weather spelling climate change doom for humanity (and people not really give a fuck unless they find themselves right smack in the middle of it), Israel has continued to bomb everyone and everything standing in their way well beyond the stone age, and a demented narcissist was elected president in the US of A, effectively paving the way for President Musk. Get off Twitter and sell your Tesla.

Despite all this I can’t quite give up hope that there will eventually come a year that will go down in history as the year no one really remembered. Let’s make 2025 that year, shall we?

The New Year’s Resolutions

It’s been quite a while since I ventured into New Year’s resolutions territory, but I’ve got two of ’em for 2025.

The first one is to use my smartphone less. I’m not big on social media, but I still manage to spend 2 to 3 hours on my phone every day. Most of it is reading the same news over, and over again and browsing Reddit, which is mostly senseless rabble. Checking in on both the news and Reddit twice a day should be enough to keep me up-to-date on what’s happening in the world. Turning off every notification except those for phone calls and text messages will probably also go a long way towards reducing my screen time.

Ideally, I’d chuck my smartphone away and replace it with a dumbphone, but the former has unfortunately become an integral part of modern, everyday way. Until I finally put on my tinfoil hat, and move out into the woods, I can’t really get rid of my smartphone.

The second New Year’s resolution is to exercise a bit more. I get on the rower a couple of times a week, but I should be more active. It could be something as low key as a quick, 30 minute walk around the block. Anything to compensating for sitting on my ass for most of the work day.

And that’s it for 2024! Here’s to an amazingly uneventful 2025!

Now go give someone important in your life a hug, and tell them how much they mean to you. They might not know it 💚

Here are summaries from previous years: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004.