It’s once again time for a look back at the past year, and I’m once again a month and a half behind schedule to do so.

Methodology Changes ¶

I didn’t change anything significant in my approach from last year, but, as promised, I did restyle the mind map to take advantage of Freeplane’s colourscheme options.¹

How I Did ¶

2024 represented a slight improvement on last year, with 40% of my goals achieved (plus 11 cancelled and 13 blocked) compared to 31% in 2023.

That the completion rate was still so low is at least in part due to the fact that I started a new job that necessitated moving to a new country. Turns out it’s hard to plan activities or maintain consistent habits when you’re hopping across the English Channel every few months. But even then, things definitely settled down in the latter half of the year but this relative calm was not reflected in an increased goal focus; to be honest, I think by that point I rarely looked at my mind map and was not making decisions with it in mind.

As usual, let’s break it down by area:

Health, Fitness & Well-being ¶

Much the same story as last year: I did okay on the ‘Health’ goals I set myself, did not do so well on the handful of ‘Well-being’ goals and did very poorly on the very large list of ‘Fitness’ goals, resulting in an ultimately weak showing. Being unable to maintain any fitness or exercise has been a problem for me for years, and as far as the ‘Well-being’ goals go I just don’t think meditation is ever going to click for me.

At the same time, my weight (and related metrics, like body fat percentage and waist circumference) has been on a pretty consistent upwards trend ever since I got back from travelling, and I broke my own personal record about the same time I moved to France. It turns out the ‘wine and pastry’ diet is not, in fact, particularly healthy, and I shall instead be returning to the the ‘rice, beans and profuse sweating’ diet that saw me consistently maintain my healthiest weight since I started tracking it (even in spite of plenty of drinking). However, I do seem to have levelled out a bit in recent months, or at least reached a fairly stable range of fluctuation.

Assets, Finance, Location & Security ¶

I ticked off a lot of stuff-related goals, such as replacing clothing and tech. equipment. I also reviewed many of the services and software I use regularly, which resulted in me changing my VPN provider, finally trying out Arch GNU/Linux and replacing Thunderbird with Betterbird as my email client. One of the perks of my new job is that they have given me a MacBook Pro, but I detest it and am eagerly awaiting M3 chip support so that I can install Asahi Linux.

One of my key focuses for this year was rebuilding my personal finances following my recent jollies. At the end of 2023 I had just gotten off of Universal Credit (which was its own Kafkaesque delight, and just the kind of experience immediately upon returning to Britain to remind one why they left in the first place). I had found a couple sources of irregular income to tide me over and my expenses were low as I was living with my parents. But, finally, in January 2024 I started a new full-time job.

Though moving to a new city and country brought its own expenses (and you can see the spike in the chart above around May, when my visa finally came through and I moved over permanently), the lower cost of living in France and my new regular salary has helped me re-stabilise myself. That said, I’m not sure I did my usual quarterly reviews of my budget towards the latter half of the year, hence the consistent divergence from my actual expenses.

Values, Purpose & Identity ¶

This is perhaps one of the more idiosyncratic areas in my ten-way division of concerns, combining as it does everything to do with this Web site of mine (under the ‘Identity’ umbrella) along with a disparate mix of spirituality, political values, legal identity (i.e., citizenships, driving licenses) and more. It was also one of the areas that saw the most development over the past year, for better or (mostly) worse.

bengoldsworthy.net ¶

First, the good: my ongoing Web homesteading efforts.

I finally remastered a few posts that had been broken ever since I migrated my site: namely the posts Chernobyl, which I peppered with inline photos and videos, and Class of 1996, to which I introduced interactive charts that I’m very proud of. I added a first pass at a geospatial visualisation of everything I’ve collected on this site over the years, polished up the CV section and finally discontinued my old WordPress site.

I also made a lot of progress on migrating over to my home-made media cataloguing tool, and I even added a couple of slash pages (/uses and /now).

Lastly, I played around with a few new CSS tricks such as logical properties and font variants. Try highlighting some text, for example, and just look how delightful and old-timey these new lowercase numbers are:

• Before: 0123456789
• After: 0123456789

Values & Purpose ¶

Here the picture is much less rosy. I think it is impossible to have been paying the slightest attention during 2024 and not have been radicalised in some way.

From January 1^st to December 31^st (and beyond in both directions), we have collectively had to watch as the state of Israel daily obliterates children, women, and men in Gaza (and, again, beyond in all directions) with near impunity. The political establishments in the US, UK and many other Western states have fallen over themselves to defend, excuse, bald-facedly lie about and materially facilitate this genocide. This remains one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed, and whatever residual liberal sentiments left over from my comfortable middle class upbringing have now been thoroughly scoured away.

I see now that these political authorities can dare claim no legitimacy and deserve neither deference, respect, nor peace; the Mandate of Heaven is utterly forfeit. I am left with no faith in their supposedly democratic institutions, nor their rituals of elections, petitions and peaceful protests, as means to affect necessary change. I see that Mao was correct in saying power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and that international law (at least as currently constituted) is little more than a pleasant fairy tale. Despite my previous reticence, I see now that dismantling the present world order is, in fact, a desirable end in and of itself, independent of the merits or presence of any proposed replacement (though I do, of course, have preferences).

I see, in the end, that the necropolitics of Gaza is an extreme expression of a future we all face sooner or later.

This is a brief summary of my political disillusionment, though there were of course many other contibuting factors: the UK elected a noxious cretin with the sheer perversity to present the reheated far-right politics of his predecessors under the utterly undeserved banner of ’labour’; the US decided to launch itself whole-heartedly into fascism, nukes and all; annual conflict-related deaths are the highest they’ve been in over a quarter-century; income and wealth inequality continue to skyrocket; and the odds of a runaway collapse of the planetary ecosystem raise daily.

That’s not to say the year has been without positives and small causes for cheer. Moving to France has brought me to a country that retains, however imperfectly, a vibrant, muscular Left, a widespread syndicalist tradition and a diffuse sense of resistance to government authority. The Assad regime finally fell in Syria, opening new doors for the Rojava revolution (as well as bringing peril, of course). And the actions of both state actors (South Africa, Spain, Ireland, et al.) and grassroots efforts (e.g., Palestine Action, the Hind Rajab Foundation, Tech for Palestine and, of course, the unfathomably resilient Palestinian people) in trying to halt the extermination campaign and bring Israel and its accomplices to justice have been truly inspiring.²

I’m also pretty confident that this isn’t some sort of displaced depression or malaise: my own situation is very comfortable, and I’m generally happy with how my own life is going. But I don’t expect it to last.

This is the culmination of a years-long process of education, reflection and observation; perhaps I’ll write about it some day. But in short: it is clear to me that there is simmering global struggle ongoing that will determine the future in which we are to live. I’m happy to call it the class war, others may prefer other terminology, but whatever we call it: now is the time of monsters, and that simmer is rapidly coming to a boil.

I am increasingly sure that we are lurching towards some sort of planetary conflagration, whether that’s a traditional world war,³ a rolling series of individual insurgencies or a mass global uprising from below (both in the socioeconomic sense and in the sense that it will come, predominantly, from the southern hemisphere). It will probably be a combination of all three.⁴ It will almost certainly be bloody. And I know that the UK, the US, the ultra-wealthy and their governments will stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the wrong side of history, if there is anyone left alive after the dust has settled to still write it.

I do expect that the current ‘great’ powers will eventually be brought low and humbled, by a combination of united external forces and their own rapacious missteps. I can only hope that whilst they are weakened, other forces will be ready to seize the opportunity to bind and hobble them for good, structuring a new order in light of the failings of the old so as to also dissuade future aspiring hegemons.

I do not claim to know what my modest role in all this may yet be. But I am clear-eyed that the time draws near when we will all be asked: Which side are you on, boy?

I can only truthfully answer where the heart lies: below and to the left.

Productivity & Organisation ¶

I never have much in this section—mostly just completing some percentage of my goals (both annual, quarterly and monthly), fulfilling themes (again, both annual and quarterly) and creating and/or maintaining a few routines. As a result, it tends to be quite easy to get most of these done.

Fun, Travel & Adventure ¶

It’s probably not possible to follow something like my time in Central America with anything even half as thrilling, unpredictable and challenging. In fact, my financial situation meant I had to kill off a goal of going Interrailing again before my 28^th birthday, and a couple travel plans with friends also fell through.

However, with my new job came relocation away from Hell Island and on to the sunny shores of southern France. Traditionally we English must await retirement to move to the Mediterranean, but I have lucked out and jumped the queue. And with my more level head on, focussing on more than just how much I missed the daily novelty and excitement of 2022–2023, taking on a new job abroad is probably the ideal compromise: I can continue some form of the travel and discovery that I was so sorely missing, whilst also making proper money and having a stable base for the first time in a couple years.

I am still encountering new things almost daily, but I am no longer living (more or less) out of a rucksack. And that’s quite nice.

Career & Work ¶

The theme I chose for 2024 was ‘Year of Career & Work’, and I think I fulfilled it pretty well!

As mentioned, I started my new full-time job (courtesy of the monthly Hacker News “Who is Hiring?” thread) a few days into the new year. Roughly three years since the end of my ill-fated KTP experience, and after a brief but unfulfilling detour into consultancy, I am now a software developer once again.

What’s more, I’m working in a small start-up comprised of around 7 people, two of whom are also developers. This means we get to be a tight-knit team with a lot of individual scope to set our own tasks, explore parts of the entire app. stack and devote time to things like refactoring and accessibility. That is all to say: we work in exactly the mode I naturally gravitate towards and thrive within.

Also, whilst the app. we work on is not necessarily inherently sexy, the context surrounding it—the festival and events sector, of which I have rather quite a history—is rather sexy indeed (as is the perennial promise of complementary tickets).

I am also finally a union man once more, having come in from the cold and joined Solidaires Informatique shortly after arriving in France, in part to protect myself in an unfamiliar labour regime and in part because I arrived just as Macron called elections and I wanted to meet politically-minded comrades as soon as possible.

I helped a long-time freelance client to migrate their sites from one tech stack to another. And, lastly, in a long-term side career of mine I transferred back to a previous group and role I had really enjoyed, and I have already achieved quite a bit in terms of advancing my training and re-integrating with the team after my time away.

Volunteering, Contribution & Impact ¶

I didn’t set myself an awful lot in this section this year, but I did hit my goal for spending on others: pretty much bob-on my target of 20% of my expenses.⁵

I also published a couple of articles and attended my first protests, plus I took part in an effort to reorganise and restructure a group I’ve been part of for several years but which has lately been a little moribund; time will tell how successful that effort has been.

I’ve not been as successful with finding volunteering opportunities in France or contributing to free software projects, but I’m going to keep plugging away at both in 2025.

Knowledge, Training & Education ¶

This is always the area in which I bite the most off, and invariably then struggle to chew through it all. But the dominant study topic of my new life by the Med has been, unsurprisingly, French. Progress has been excruciatingly slow, and every day I use it and am reminded of how much I love Spanish, but I think I’m very gradually getting there.

Alongside French, I also continued to take salsa classes (having first dipped my toe in the water in Mexico), as well as online Woodbrooke courses in Relational Campaigning and Nonviolent Communication.

Then, right at the end of the year, I finally earnt my amateur radio Full License, bringing with it the ability to operate around the world; now I just need some kit and a shack to house it all…

Arts, Culture & Creativity ¶

I certainly didn’t do a very good job at creating things (i.e., blogging regularly), but I did a better job on the consumption side. I finished a good number of books, games, films and TV series’, including several I had specifically marked out for myself (such as the complete reading list for a Radical Approaches to Filmmaking course I took the year before).

I also, in a surprise bit of luck after I’d largely given up on it, chanced to run into someone with a copy of Autonomía Zapatista to spare. It’s now at my parents’, awaiting my next visit back to the UK, along with Daybreak (which I bought the moment I heard Matt Leacock was involved).

Social Life & Relationships ¶

After my time away, I managed to catch up with most of my friends and family over 2024, including many that I hadn’t seen since before my trip. I also visited a few pals I had med in Central America, now that we were all back in Europe. And, I had a very pleasant surprise when someone unexpectedly came back into my life several years after I thought we’d drifted apart for good.

Taking Stock ¶

This is my third year of this mind map approach to setting annual goals, and I’m faced with a pretty dubious average success rate (43%). I think it’s time that I had a real rethink.

Clearly, part of the problem is still that I set myself far too many things to do; I’d likely struggle to complete the bulk of them even if I didn’t face unforeseen disruptions and distractions. That said, I do think that part of the problem is that I’m not very consistent in my goal definitions.

For example, ‘Meet friends I haven’t seen for a while’ and ‘Meet up with UK friends at least quarterly’ are superficially similar goals, but behave very differently. The former is much more flexible when it comes whether or not I feel I’ve achieved it (in a similar vein to the thematic approach I mentioned above), whilst also doing a better job of capturing why I want to do it (i.e., I haven’t seen some people for longer than others, so I should prioritise doing so). The latter, however, is more quantifiable and helps to capture a different sense of the why with its choice of metric; i.e., the idea is clearly to meet friends regularly throughout the year, not to just meet all of my friends in the space of one week in January and then go solo for the remainder of the year.

However, obviously I am not going to spend time with other people solely because I wrote it into a mind map at the start of the year. So why do I bother writing these sorts of goals down, but not things like ‘Breathe consistently’ and ‘Eat food’? Well, in the former case it gives me a place to list all the friends I haven’t seen for some time and how many months (or years) it’s been; in the latter, I can use it as a sort of tripwire alarm, in that if I am looking back at the end of a quarter and realise I haven’t meet up with any UK friends, that will flag to me that I should examine why that was (even if it turns out to be benign, like I’ve been in France for the last three months and nobody’s come to visit me), or suggest that I reconsider my expectations (e.g., should I count videocalls with friends in lieu of in-person meet-ups?). So there’s the further dual functions of ‘recording additional details’ and ‘monitoring & feedback aide’.

I think a better distinction between these different classes of objectives would have two benefits. First, it would make me think harder about why I am adding certain goals, and where I want to find myself in one year’s time. Second, it would help to split an overwhelmingly numerous flat hierarchy of goals into a more reasonable ordering of both long-term goals and the specific sub-tasks needed to make progress towards them.

Lastly, now that I have spruced up the visuals of my mind maps, I want to explore the other things I can do with Freeplane. Specifically: automation, so that I don’t have to go through a manually count hundreds of goals each time.⁶