…and no blog posts.

Oops.

It’s fair to say that 2023 was… a busy year. Despite this, I felt like I was treading water through much of it… and it’s how I ended the year.

Now we’ve started 2024, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on 2023 and see whether it was as “meh” as I’ve come to tell myself it was, or whether, actually, it was a little better than that.

And you know what? It was a mixed bag.

To simplify the previously-written load of rambling, here’s a list of “things I’m happy with” and “things I’m not happy with” :D

Things I’m Happy With

• Work – going well, clients happy, no worries there. Plus, websites for Studio Scully and my personal site have been updated at last!
• Savings – growing a bit – cheers clients!
• Home life – good, chilled (in general) :)
• Learning piano – I know enough to be able to read basic sheet music, play both-handed, understand a bit more theory, and play (after some trial and error) and am making my own melodies up
• Squage Party – restarted it and moved to 1 hour each Friday – it’s fun, and we’ve got a great little community
• Keeping in touch with Friends – keeping in touch with various friends back in the UK/Ireland via Slack and Discord has been great. plus had friends come visit Maastricht and it was lovely to hang out!
• MegaGame Help – I helped my friend Chris from Very Large Huge Games with graphics (posters for Aftermath and the upcoming First Contact: Rain of Terror, in-game turn timer styling and on-screen ‘news bulletin’ intros), and tech-opping of a couple of Mega Games in London.
• Christmas Quiz – we did an online quiz this year on video, 15 teams of friends and family played and it went really well, with a custom web app for answers/marking. Very happy with that
• Computer games – decided on a cool idea for a game, and started doing game documentation / research / doodles
• Sunday Internet Radio – It’s been fun, and although I was a bit burned out during the latter part of the year, listening back to a “best of” this evening made me realise we’ve been having a LOT of fun doing our silly little hobby in 2023
• Album mastering – helped my friend Andy Drysdale by mastering his album The Old Morris Dancer.
• Rest – We’ve started going to a local spa once a week and it’s… ah, so lovely mentally and physically
• Mental health – Started working on that, so hopefully that’ll keep getting better in 2024!

Things I’m Not Happy With

• Weight – ho boy. Too much food. Not enough exercise.
• Tiredness – need to get more sleep so I can be more motivated!
• Procrastination – see: not having blogged since Jan 2023
• Computer Games – need to actually make something – see: Procrastination
• Piano – I stopped lessons after the summer break, as I had a bad concert performance (which hit my confidence) and I felt the pieces in the last few lessons were getting too far beyond me, plus work started getting very busy so I didn’t find the time to practice things like sight reading.
• Keeping in touch with friends – there are some dear friends I’ve been terrible at keeping in touch with. Need to sort that out!
• Keeping in touch with family – ditto!
• Feeling Settled – several years here and we’re still not settled, really. Don’t feel part of the community, and don’t feel motivated to learn the language. Plus fireworks. JFC. Just… don’t. I’m very tired right now through us being in a car with our dog from 9:30pm to 2:30am last night to get away from the war zone.

Looking to the future…

Here’s what I’m hoping for in 2024:

• More fun here – Doing more together here outside of work
• Pastures new – Moving to Ireland or the UK or… who knows!
• Computer games – Make a load of progress and start SHARING the progress too, via methods such as…
• Blogging – Doing more blogging to share with you what I’m doing! Also improve this terrible old blog theme :D
• Piano – Restart lessons but slow it down to focus on filling gaps in my knowledge and improving my confidence
• Weight – Lose weight through exercise and better eating – and more sleep
• Staying in touch – Keep in more regular contact with family and those friends who aren’t in Slack/Discord

Speaking of sleep, I’ve been writing this for over an hour now and it’s late. Work tomorrow!

See you soon – I hope – and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Pat