As with last year, I set out to watch the ten Best Picture Oscar nominees before the ceremony. I’d seen just two of them when the list came out and collecting the other eight has been fun. Most of these were films I wouldn’o’t have watched otherwise and I’ve liked trying something different.
I’m not much good at predictions but I do think The Brutalist stands a very strong chance. However, I think I’m Still Here was the best of the ten – I would also be delighted to see The Substance become the first body horror best picture winner.
Below is a list of all ten movies, in order of how satisfied I’ll be if they win the Oscar, starting from the one I liked least. Links go to my letterboxd reviews.
Emilia Perez felt like a car crash, with overly simplistic politics and boring songs. I have no idea how this was put forward.
Dune: Part 2 was epic science fiction story, but I found it unengaging. Too self-consciously epic, with nothing much behind the spectacle.
I felt cheated by Wicked when over two-hours of run-time ended with ‘to be continued’. Up to then, I’d been enjoying it – far more than I’d expected.
Like Dune: Part 2, Conclave was a fantasy movie set in a strange world. Beautifully made with a great performance from Ralph Fiennes.
A Complete Unknown was entertaining, despite the mumbled dialogue, but felt like a fairly standard biopic.
There’s a lot I disliked about The Substance, but it produced an intense reaction in the cinema audience I saw it with. I’d be delighted if something this extreme wins.
Anora was a great movie which went to some unexpected places, with a great ending.
I didn’t enjoy Nickel Boys, and I’m a little disappointed at myself for that. It tells an important story, and was beautifully made, but didn’t work for me.
At over three-and-a-half hours, The Brutalist felt self consciously epic, and has stuck in my head since I saw it. Guy Pearce’s supporting role was excellent.
But I’m Still Here was my favourite of the ten. The story, about a political murder, is heartbreaking, but what stood out most was the portrayal of a family enduring through difficult times. Fernanda Torres was incredible. Very glad I got to see this in the cinema.
I’ve become increasingly convinced that social media – in its corporate, algorithmic form – is harmful. Not just politically, as we’re seeing from gamergate going global; but in the way it removes energy from the offline world.
Last year I gave a couple of talks where I referred to Hakim Bey’s book Immediatism. Bey talks about the need for unmediated artistic interactions, but stresses the importance of these being in person:
To be “too busy” for the Immediatist project is to miss the very essence of Immediatism. To struggle to come together every Monday night (or whatever), in the teeth of the gale of busyness, or family, or invitations to stupid parties—that struggle is already Immediatism itself. Succeed in actually physically meeting face-to-face with a group which is not your spouse-&-kids, or the “guys from my job,” or your 12-step Program—& you have already achieved virtually everything Immediatism yearns for. An actual project will arise almost spontaneously out of this successful slap-in-the-face of the social norm of alienated boredom.
There is something alienating and banal about corporate social media. It feels like Guy De Bord’s vision of the spectacle taken to the extreme: “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”
More than anything I wonder about how this corporate social media is draining the energy that should be used for in-person encounters. I’m not thinking of tedious nostalgia, like saying people don’t talk to strangers because of their phones. I’m thinking of things like conversations about shared interests happening online and never reaching the real world.
In the last episode of Panic World podcast, Magdalene Taylor described seeing a group of women in a bar browsing Tinder while, nearby, a group of men were doing the same thing. That’s an example of what I’m thinking about – real-life conversations that are short-circuited by the internet.
This month, I deleted my Instagram and deactivated my Bluesky account. It was hard – how will I keep up with the world? How will I promote my own work? The opportunity cost of leaving feels massive. But, at the same time, I definitely won’t find what I am looking for online. I want a way out of that alienated boredom.
The Internet has been valuable for putting groups in touch with each other – it’s allowed geographically scattered marginalised communities to make contact and organise. But I think there is something unhealthy about the current form. I am disengaging to look for something better.
January mostly went well, considering how burned out I was in December. I started the year by swimming in Gaddings Dam on New Years Day. Despite the wind and rain, I managed a short dip. I’ve not been wild swimming for a while, and I’m looking forward to going back when it’s warmer.
January has mostly been about resetting things: getting up to speed with my new client; decluttering the house; thinking about the year ahead. There have been lots of irritations – a leak, a flat tyre, a lost Kindle (which was not backed up) and so on. The local train companies have also been bad, inflicting some awful journeys on me – a 90-minute return from Blackpool that took over 6 hours, featuring taxi, bus and 2 miles on foot due to a closed road. But, as tiring and frustrating as some things were, I’m building momentum and generally happy.
I walked 377,040 steps in January, an average of 12,163 daily, with my largest count being 23,245 when I walked to Todmorden and back. I made little impact on the weight I put on in December. My diet continued to be poor for most of the month but I finally got a grip on it, because it made seeing a personal trainer feel like a weird findom kink. The steps continue as a maintenance dose – I’m thinking of committing to a decent 30,000 step hike in February to get the blood flowing. The difficulty will be finding the time.
Resisting the cakes at the office is challenging
The January blues struck for my writing, with ideas coming slowly. I’ve also been trying to make writing feel like less of an obligation. For years, I’ve set a daily target of writing for an hour. I decided to stop this, as my goal is not really how long I write for, but how much I enjoy it and whether things are being published. So far, removing that daily goal feels positive. I did consider stopping/slowing the substack too, but decided a weekly email is overall a good thing. I like having a flow of work into the world.
I’ve made more effort to go to writing events, attending a workshop and a local writer’s group. I also published a new zine in a very limited 23-copy edition as a Horkos pledge. I want to do more zines with words and photos.
I’ve managed a little more reading than usual this month, including Jenny Hval’s Paradise Rot, which I received as a Christmas present from Naomi. Another gift was A Brief History of Intelligence from Tom, which turned around my thinking on a lot of topics. I also finally read Will Ashon’s Chamber Music, a set of essays around the Wu-Tang Clan. I watched Muriel’s Wedding which was great, apart from not committing to the obvious lesbian romance. Red Rooms was impressively dark. I also started watching the Oscar nominees; Nickel Boys was a great piece of work, even if I didn’t like it personally.
A gallery tag on a tree turns the landscape into art
I tried to spend less time on social media but found myself drawn back. It’s too easy as a default activity when I’m working on my personal laptop. I’m loving Mastodon, but Bluesky and Instagram just feel draining. I wondered if I should delete my accounts but I feel resistant, as if I will be losing something. So much of my life is caught up in a sunk cost fallacy. It’s the same with my walking streak – it feels like I would lose something if I just stopped, even though that’s ridiculous.
The political discourse has added to the stress on social media; but the current situation is hard to understand. I can’t believe that Elon Musk would make what looked like a Nazi salute, and then feel no need to provide a denial or explanation. At the same time, the US media and establishment is pretending that the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021 was acceptable. After all the cinematic propaganda about the strength of US institutions, it’s unsettling to see how fragile they actually are. The world feels like it doesn’t make sense.
New statues have been added to the Hebden Bridge grotto. Things are back how they should be.
I’ve been frustrated with Spotify recently, but it has turned up an incredible artist, Midwife. I’ve been playing her recent record on repeat – how can I not fall in love with an album called No Depression in Heaven, whose lead track is Rock N Roll Never Forgets? In the past I’ve found shoegaze/dreampop less haunting or tuneful than I would like; but this is perfect.
The fearsome Spine Race came through the centre of town this year
I’ve been finding Spotify wearisome. It’s no longer easy to find new music, and the app constantly tries to manipulate my behaviour. All I want is to listen to music and, maybe, podcasts. It’s frustrating that I am restricted to the one official client. Ed Zitron’s Never forgive them is a great screed, and really struck home: “at the drop of a hat, hundreds of millions of people’s experience of listening to music would change based on the whims of a multi-billionaire, with the express purpose being to force these people to engage with completely different content as a means of increasing engagement metrics and revenue”.
I’m still enjoying work, even though I’m finding it tricky. I’ve been playing with React at home, and wrote a blog post on whether Java has a future.
David Lynch died on January 16th. I didn’t feel sad about it. He lived to 78 and made some great, uncompromising work – this seems to be a pretty good life. Also, given the announcements about his health, this was also not unexpected. I’m mostly grateful that he delivered Twin Peaks: The Return, one of the greatest pieces of art I’ve seen.
I re-read Garth Ennis’s 90s comic book Preacher. I loved this at the time but a lot of the edgelord elements are uncomfortable 30 years later. The book’s racism and homophobia is vile, and the machismo feels ridiculous. But, under the bullshit, is a well-told tale about friendship. Also, I was amused to learn that I say “sure thing!” in meetings as it’s what Arseface says.
I listened to Live through This and thought about how sad I was at the time it was released; such a contrast with how content I feel now.
I’ve been focussed on relaxing and doing less, but this doesn’t seem to have made me less effective. To think, I could have done this at any time in my life.
There was a Humble Bundle with 45 volumes of a comic book I read in the 90s. I decided not to buy it, as I wouldn’t have time to read more than a few of those collections. Maybe I’m growing wiser.
I’ve been making my own stir fry sauces. It turns out to be dead easy and they taste better than the shop-bought ones.
December was a long, worn-out month where I counted the days till my Christmas break. I always exhaust myself as the year ends, but this was worse then usual. I was happy enough, just burning out. It took about ten days to recover after finishing work.
Christmas itself was wonderful. I cooked for my family the Saturday before, then had Rosy and Olive staying for the day itself. We had lots of delicious food, including an amazing vegan cheese selection from Honestly Tasty, and caught a couple of classic Christmas movies at the Hebden Bridge Picture-house. I then had a quiet, wholesome New Years Eve.
Cameras with thermal printers are so cool
The trickiest part of December was adjusting to my new work client. It’s an exciting project but the scale of everything is overwhelming. On top of that, the weekly trip to the client site is a round-trip of 5½ hours. I’d budgeted for this, but it was still a shock. I’m finding ways to improve my commute (one being to leave on the quieter 5.56 train) but there is some way to go.
Despite an irregular schedule, I’ve continued my gym visits and daily steps. I walked a total of 374,259 steps, a daily average of 12,073. My peak was 17,476 steps. My fitness came second to work/celebrations and I put on 1.4 pounds which needs to come off in January.
I’ve talked about my writing in 2024 elsewhere, but December was particularly busy. I gave a seminar at Chichester Uni, released the Mycelium Parish News and did a live event for the Parish News Launch. The Advent Calendar was being read throughout the month, and I think it’s the best project I’ve done – work has now started on next year’s. Having so many things happen in the same month was hard work and, as usual, nothing was marketed as well as it deserved. But I feel inspired and have some interesting ideas for future projects.
We took Rosie to the pub but she got scare and hid from some other dogs.
Reading for December was mostly finishing books I’d started in previous months. Three books from the month made it onto my best-of-the-year list: Ben Edge’s book on folklore was entertaining, even when going over familiar ground; Daisy Johnson’s Hotel was on of the best horror short story collections I’ve read; and the Michael Lewis book Going Infinite was a gripping book about Sam Bankman-Fried, a subject I’d not thought I would be so interested in.
The paths in the woods by my house are often re-routed by fallen trees.
So many of the books I’m buying are 99p offers from Kindle. If I wait long enough, everything I want to buy turns up there. Knowing this has stopped me buying hardbacks sometimes – it’s frustrating to pay full price a week or two before being offered a bargain. This can’t be good for the publishing industry.
Isn’t this an amazing piece of moss?
Last month, I received a couple of awards for my contributions at work. This sort of thing used to make me very cynical, but my response to my current job is very different. I love both the client and internal work, especially the conference I helped put on a few weeks ago. This is close to being the longest I’ve had a single job, and I’m amazed at my continued enthusiasm.
But I do need to pace myself better. It took me over a week to clear all the piled things on my desk – which I wish I’d done sooner, given how calm I felt straight after. I tend to clutter my house easily, and I need to do something about that. I read a good forum discussion on house clearances and it made me realise how many things I’m keeping for no reason. I should be using the fancy glasses, not keeping them safe for who-knows-what.
My flickr account is still live! Maybe I will start posting there again. (But perhaps I should look for a federated image service instead?)
Spotify Wrapped was disappointing this year. In the past it’s suggested interesting patterns about what I listen to. This year’s just felt like engagement bait.
A taxi driver asked me what my religion was – not something I’ve been asked in a long time, and I struggled to explain maltheism.
I’ve continued to avoid reading news and I don’t feel like I’m missing much.
I picked up a cheap copy of Far Cry 6 at the town market and it seemed underwhelming. As much as I love some video games, I find many of them banal.
I completed a re-watch of Twin Peaks Season 1 and was surprised at how many scenes I didn’t remember at all, even after seeing the series several times.
2024 has been the best year of my life so far. The future might be a scary place – not least because, at some point, I die there – but, for now, I appreciate how fortunate I am. I live somewhere beautiful, I have a job I love, and I’m happy with my writing.
Living in a small town has made a huge contribution to my quality of life. I worried at first that I would be isolated but instead I feel calmer and happier. This suggests that I was finding Brighton far more stressful than I’d realised.
I’ve now had my current job for two years and in February this will be the longest I’ve had a single job. I find myself eager to become a better programmer and to deepen my involvement. Work has changed from being a toad squatting on my life to something that makes me happy (although work/life balance is still sometimes tricky).
I’ve written elsewhere about my writing, how happy I am with that currently, and my creative plans for next year.
Reading back on last year’s post, I was complaining about the number of headaches I had. This year I have suffered far fewer. It looked like one of the main triggers was dehydration, which was easily fixed. This has been a huge improvement.
Things won’t be this good forever, but I hope they stay this way for a long time. But there are things I am looking to work on.
Social Media
I’ve been frustrated with social media for a long time but I continue to read it. It’s definitely not worth the time spent. I need to stop social media being a default activity when I open my laptop.
Social media no longer works for me as a way of communicating with people – particularly as most sites have now removed the option of receiving notifications via email. As soon as I visit the sites I’m distracted by the streams.
I do enjoy writing posts for social media and sharing photographs, but it’s hard not to get caught by the distraction machine. The only place that I don’t find too noisy is Mastodon. While this is a small network, I still find it satisfying – not least because the lack of an algorithm reduces the incentives for people to make engagement bait.
The main reason creatives give for not leaving social media is that it will limit their promotion – but given how bad some sites have become for this, I’m not convinced it’s a big loss.
I’ll still keep the accounts open, but try to reduce my check-ins to every few days.
Health and Fitness
I’m making progress with my fitness – I ended 2023 having put on a lot of weight over that year and removed it in 2024. My back and shoulders are less tight, feeling better than I ever imagined they could. I’m stronger and have more energy.
Having a gym membership and personal trainer has been an important commitment. But I don’t feel I’m getting value for money, particularly as the cost of living rises. I need to focus more on the training, making sure I am eating properly and doing exercise outside the gym.
One positive about the training is that my hip is getting stronger, which means I can get back to running. Obviously, I’d love to set an ambitious goal for 2025, but let’s pick something modest – I want to be doing regular 5k runs by the Summer.
Clutter and Burnout
I ended work in December feeling very burned out; and throughout the year I’ve pushed myself too hard. I need to find ways to use my energy more efficiently.
Part of this is just reducing the clutter in my life. I tidied my study after Christmas and suddenly everything felt much simpler. It’s easy to let things pile up and chaos seems to take a constant toll on me.
The other aspect of this is over-committing and stressing about this. I’ve decided to stop using a daily to-do list app, switching instead to weekly lists, allowing me a little more flexibility. I’m also going to try reducing the amount of things I commit myself to. The days I enjoy most are the ones I allow myself to float a little – which also tend to be the days that I achieve most.
I also want to spend a little more time disconnected from networks. Back in October I found waiting somewhere while low on phone battery. It was the first time I’d sat quietly in months – no devices, no notebooks. I was amazed at the thoughts that emerged and realised there was a part of myself that I had suppressed. I need to make more space for that.
So, in summary, my goals for 2025 are:
Stop wasting time with social media
Exercise outside the gym
Build up my running
Prioritise calm by reducing clutter and commitment
I read 55 books in 2024. Looking back, there were some obvious great ones that stood out. In alphabetical order by title, the ten best are below:
I wrote a long post on Jess Richards’ Birds & Ghosts and deleted it. Birds and Ghosts is beautifully written and technically impressive. It also made me very sad.
Folklore Rising by Ben Edge looks like it’s going to be a story of a man’s ‘quest’ to explore English folklore. Edge somehow salvages this unpromising concept, partly through his artwork. His accounts of folk rituals are sometimes uncomfortable – while Edge is sometimes treated as an insider, there are more occasions where he is threatened as an outsider. Edge produces a good survey of folklore and current thinking around it.
I didn’t expect much when starting Going Infinite, Michael Lewis’ book on Sam Bankman-Fried. I was soon gripped by the bizarre story about how quickly someone can become a billionaire, and how suddenly that can fall apart. I was most surprised to finish the book convinced that SBF was mistreated by the justice system. It was interesting to see a discussion of Peter Singer and Effective Altruism, something I want to follow up more.
Daisy Johnson’s Hotel was a beautiful book of fragile ghost stories set in a hotel. Despite this being a small book, Johnson finds many ways to explore the concept and the opening chapter is virtuosic.
Live through this by Patty Schemel was another grunge biography. I already knew parts of Schemel’s story from her 2011 movie Hit So Hard. This edition was a UK release of Schemel’s biography and it tells a horrifying story about addiction, stripped of the cliches and bravado found in many other rock books.
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen is terrifying and remarkable. It lays out how bad a nuclear war might be. While it’s possible that this is a very worst case scenario, the book is an urgent warning. I’ve had nightmares since reading it, and can only hope that the forthcoming Denis Villeneuve movie helps grow a movement against nuclear weapons.
I tend to feel intimidated by Booker Prize winners but Paul Sampson’s Prophet Song was very readable and terrifying.
Translated from the Dutch, We Had to Remove this Post by Hanna Bervoets was a short, literary novel that produced a strong sense of dread as it described the lives of online content moderators.
Nostalgia is death, but Uncommon People is the best book I’ve read so far on Britpop. Rather than retelling the mainstream story Miranda Sawyer picks up some of the stranger elements of the genre, before its mainstream co-option.
Wicked and Weird by Buck 65 is an unconventional biography, full of tall tales. I’d rather read a biography where things are made up than boring.
Alongside my prose reading, I’ve been enjoying the new series from Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard, The Power Fantasy, which has completed its first arc. The book using superheroes as an allegory for nuclear diplomacy, producing a book where the characters have to avoid coming into conflict. It’s a gripping and horrifying work.
It’s been a tricky year for reading, and I’ve found myself bogged down in unrewarding books at times. My top ten feels a little weaker than recent years too, despite a few exceptional books. As ever, I need to be more eager to discard books that aren’t rewarding.
For the first time in my life, I feel happy with where my writing is at. I’ve a small but responsive audience, and it’s at just the right size for me to do some interesting projects. The year’s highlights were Peakrill Press publishing True Clown Stories and my 24-story advent calendar. I’ve also continued the weekly substack and my favourite stories from this were:
I will continue the weekly substack – I like writing odd, quick stories for this. But, while the mailing list works for me, I’m increasingly frustrated with the substack platform, which is growth hacking its platform at the expense of direct engagement for individual lists. I expect to migrate some time this year.
I need to get a better at promoting my publications – I’ve released some good things, my marketing is not as good as the work. The promotion needs to be planned as part of the project.
I’m not interested in a large audience – Simon Indelicate’s essay Metrics are the Thief of Joy captured how I feel. I want engaged, responsive readers – the sort of audience relationships that don’t scale.
The advent calendar project was the most enjoyable project I’ve done. Partly for its ridiculous ambition, but also for how it invited people to respond. I want to do more experiments like this, particularly around participation.
I will start to work towards writing a novel in the next couple of years. There are many bad reasons for working on a novel, but I’m taken by Joseph Matheny’s suggestion that you should focus on an audience of 65 people.
Towards the end of 2024, I talked to a couple of groups about immediatism – how art needs to be as unmediated as possible. I have become very comfortable sitting at home writing – particularly as work has taken more of my energy. So, I want to spend more time with in-person writing groups. I also did a single performance last year, and I’d like to do more.
It’s not about the size of the audience. This was one of my favourite ever performances
At the end of 2023, I wondered if writing was worth the effort I put into it, when I could be putting that energy into my career. In 2024, my career has become more important to me, but so has the writing. Things are still not quite right – some of my creative projects drained more energy than they should have done – but I am getting there.
Julie Mcdowall’s history of British preparations for nuclear war, Attack Warning Red, was one of two incredibly disturbing books I read about the subject this year. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the threat of nuclear war has receded but it’s still there. The world has around 12,500 nuclear weapons, 2,000 on high alert (source).
Attack Warning Red discussed the often-futile measures taken in readiness for nuclear war with Russia. Britain is a small, densely packed country and the fallout from even a small number of strikes would have affected most people. Much of the preparations and planning was a sham. In the 1980s, journalist Duncan Campbell calculated that the sandbagging requirements of Hull alone would exhaust the entire national supply of sand.
Mcdowall discusses the plans for forced labour crews to clear corpses from the streets and how hospitals could mercifully end lives when there was no medicine. In one health authority, it was suggested that medical staff forage for folk remedies. Toilet facilities in large bunkers were designed without doors or were too few in number to reduce the risk of suicides.
Reading this book gave me a few nightmares and left me wrestling with the horror of a world in which we casually allow an existential threat to linger. There is little comfort. I read the Wikipedia list of nuclear tests in attempts to reassure myself – we’ve exploded over a thousand of these without the world ending. I read the essay collapse won’t reset society which looked at the black death and the fall of Nazi Berlin to show how bureaucracy endures even the worst disaster. Towards the end:
U.S. government estimates predict a death toll of between 13 to 34 million people for a nuclear exchange involving 3,000 warheads, with substantial additional fatalities that would result from a lack of medical care, lack of utilities, and ensuing food shortage. But even at a final death toll of 10 to 20 percent of the total population, and infrastructure destruction similar to the situation in Germany after the Second World War, the total shock of nuclear war could likely fall within the range historically absorbed by modern economies and governments.
I don’t understand how the world’s political leaders are not thinking about nuclear war all the time, and it horrifies me that nobody is trying to fix this. Wikipedia also lists military nuclear accidents and some of these are horrifying. In 1983, an order was given for a nuclear strike and refused. Eventually we are going to be very unlucky.
These weapons are so obscene that it’s hard to justify owning them, even in a defensive capacity. Trident is solely designed for retaliatory strikes, and I’m not sure it’s worth killing millions of civilians in revenge if the Trident deterrent fails.
This is the third time I’ve produced the Parish News with my friend Dan Sumption of Peakrill Press. The Mycelium Parish News is a collection of strange and interesting culture and events from over the last year, including podcasts, books, albums and more. This year’s text is significantly longer than the previous two issues.
We’re pleased that we’ve kept the price down to £2.30 – including postage and packing – as we want to get this into as many people’s hands as possible. As with last year, we have a print run of 300 copies, after which this edition will be posted online. You can see our previous issues at the Internet Archive.
The 2025 edition is already underway (a mere 270 words so far) – get in touch if there’s anything you think we should add!
Earlier this year, I thought it would be cool to make an advent calendar featuring a short horror story for each day. This turned out to be a lot more work than expected, but well worth the stupid amount of time it took.
Image from @jennifer_allanson on instagram
Each week during the spring and summer I wrote a new Christmas story. I finished 22, added a couple of other things (thanks, @muffichka!), gave them to my friend Emma to do the make look good, and sent everything to a printer.
When the box first arrived, I was convinced that the printers had made a mistake. But no, that’s what over 1,500 A5 sheets look like. And I had to fold and sticker each one.
In some ways, this whole project was an example of the sunk cost fallacy. I’d not considered all the costs and I’d not estimated how much time it would take. But I was too far in. Nothing else to do but set to folding-up a couple of calendars each day.
The stories made it out in good time for December 1st, and it’s been delightful to see people opening and enjoying them. Everyone seems happy – although they’ve not reached the more unpleasant stories yet.
Image from @sophystar on instagram
This was a stupid, ambitious project, but I’m glad I did it. Some ideas are so infeasible that you look for a way to make them happen.
The worst thing is, I’m doing this next year. I’ve got prompts for over 60 more potential stories, some of which I’ll be working on this month. Some things are so ridiculous, they’re worth doing more than once.
