Yearnote 2023
"Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride."
Verbs
Reading
Top spot for my reading in 2023 still goes to Cuddy by Benjamin Myers which has stayed with me in the days and weeks since first reading it. It’s beautiful, evocative, funny, and deeply moving all whilst being rooted in the lore, history, and mythology of the north of England. I’ve also been reading and re-reading a lot of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books this year - hoping to pick off the few I’ve never read as well as revisiting some that I’ve not read for years (decades??) Thief of Time could well be my all time favourite. For now at least. Other stand out books include all those by Lynda Barry that I’ve been rereading and taking huge inspiration from, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s mind-warping One Billion Years to the End of the World, Jasper Fforde’s sparkling political allegory The Constant Rabbit, Rick Rubin’s sage and nourishing The Creative Act, and the incomparable Ursula Le Guin’s essay collection Space Crone.
Watching
For visual media nothing has quite hit me so hard as Oppenheimer. Breathless, urgent, and transformative with cinematography and sound design that reach into your brain and deftly turn it fully inside out. On the smaller screen BBC’s Ghosts has continued to be a source of enormous comfort, humour, and joy. One Piece on Netflix showed just how anime and comic book series could be brought to TV whilst keeping all of the vibrancy and creativity of the original. For All Mankind (which we’re only half way through!) is already shaping up to be an all time classic and will thrill space nerds everywhere. Finally, there’s never a day I don’t want to be watching the continued brilliance that is Taskmaster.
Seeing
For sheer hours of listening time, and brute quantity of enjoyment, nothing comes close to how much pleasure I’ve take from World’s Beyond Number which may well be my single favourite piece of media from 2023. Yes, it’s sort of a live-play D&D podcast but it is so, so, so very much more than that, too. Some of the richest, most compelling, and enchanting world building and storytelling I’ve ever come across all brought to life by improvisers and performers at the absolute height of their powers. Vikingur Ólafsson’s recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is still by far my most listened to album of 2023 and Zutomayo’s bouncy J-Pop is sitting at the top of my number 1 playlists on Apple Music at the end of the year.
Playing
It’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and there’s nothing else. Nothing, in fact, for miles behind it. I still have enormous love for my previous all-time-favourite Zelda game, Majora’s Mask, but this has seized the top spot of my personal Zelda charts and is, in all likelihood, my favourite game of all time. A lot of D&D has been played in the first 8 or 9 months of the year, before we went on hiatus, and it is still a blast to play and some of the most fun you can have with your brain. A late addition to our board game hoard, Mycelium was a game I backed on Kickstarter as a Christmas present for my wife and we’re both looking forward to playing it now we’ve got some time to enjoy over the festive period.
Words
At a friend’s wedding earlier in the year.
This year has had its fair share of complications, challenges, and obstacles but there’s also been some fantastic chances for travel, work, and personal growth and exploration. We’ve gained a dog, the ever-wonderful Teddy, we’ve bought a car, we’ve continued to establish our roots here in Serbia, and spent time with friends and family all over the world. We’ve been fortunate enough to travel a reasonable amount with trips to the UK, Sicily, Brazil, and Switzerland, and work taking me to Barcelona and Berlin too.
Losing a large chunk of my freelance work when my main employer began to shut its doors earlier this year was a huge blow and I’m still figuring out my way forward professionally to some extent. As part of that, I’ve spent a good portion of the last few months setting up my own company - SWUX Learning Experience Design Studio, and working more for the International Baccalaureate as a workshop leader and developer. I’ve also been expanding my professional network through conference speaking opportunities, collaborations, and partnerships. It’s still a project that has a huge amount still to be done, and the learning curve is enormous, but it feels like things are moving in something close to the right direction even if I’m often not totally sure what I’m doing at any given moment!
I have a tendency to only look back on the things that didn’t work out and to look ahead only to the difficulties yet to come, so I’m trying a little harder to also take stock of the victories, the problems solved, and the successes that happened, too. Having made a particular effort to write a diary every day this year has helped a lot in this regard and has made it easier for me to see the wins when they came (which they did) as well as to see those times when things didn’t work out with a little more perspective. It’s definitely a practice I’ll be carrying next year and I’ve already got a fresh 2024 diary sitting on my desk ready.
I’ll be taking it easy over the next few days as we celebrate the new year and then Orthodox Christmas here in Serbia. After that, I’ll be continuing the work that’s been done so far to keep building SWUX and to find exciting, interesting, and rewarding opportunities in the education space. I’ll also be prepping for my work trips to Abu Dhabi and Riga to run workshops for the IBO, as well as planning more personal travel throughout the year with my wife and friends and family. I think its fair to say that there’s exciting times ahead!
See you all in 2024.