Top 100 Things That Made My Year, 2024
In no particular order.
Top 100 Things that Made My Year, 2024
Pickleball. This was the year I discovered and fell in love with pickleball. My enthusiasm even convinced some coworkers to pick it up.
My diary. I’ve kept up with filling in two pages per day for the entire year. I miss some days but not many. I always look forward to my evening writing routine. I never know what will show up.
My stack of completed diaries so far. Hiking. Every weekend, my plan is to hit the trails (wearing my Keen hiking boots, of course). The AllTrails app makes it convenient to discover and navigate trails.
Coffee. I’m not particular to any brand, really, but I love a cup of coffee in the morning.
Road trip to Utah. Got to ride in a side-by-side for the first time. Lots of beautiful landscapes to see in Utah!
Long trails winding along tall mountains. 
It started to snow while we were in Zion. One Line a Day book. 2024 was the last year to fill out of this “five-year memory book.” I have an entry for every day!
2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024. Books. Here’s every book I read in 2024, and here’s my top ten for 2024. If you make me choose a favorite of the bunch, it’s The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control.
Hey Kid, Watch This! This delightful book offers movie recommendations aimed at youngsters but plenty enjoyable for adults, all presented in a charming layout. There are gems throughout, including some movies I’d forgotten about, like Drop Dead Fred.
My diary entry after watching Drop Dead Fred. Rubber stamp making. Just carve up some erasers. Like a lot of things, simpler is better.
The Pump app. Arnold’s fitness app finally got me to lift weights consistently. It also helps that he responded to me on X.
David protein bars. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough is my favorite flavor. I love these so much, my girlfriend made a sticker for me.
StoryGraph. GoodReads has so much data on me yet barely does anything with it. I jumped to StoryGraph, which has better recommendations and analytics.
Glerups slip-ons. If it’s winter and I’m indoors, I’m wearing these slippers.
Nap time. Midday naps.
Pentel brush pen. My main tool for writing in my diary. It’s so satisfying to draw lines with these.
Enter the Void Bread and Badger mug. I drink coffee out of my Bee Mug every morning.
Kindle. I'll always prefer physical books, but Kindle helps keep my shelves from overflowing.
Baby carrots. My go-to snack.
Gandalf the squirrel. We trained a wild squirrel to take in-shell peanuts from our hands. She visits our third story balcony every day. Patches of gray run down her back, so we called her Gandalf. (We thought she was a he until the day she came around with visible nipples from nursing.)
Gandalf the Squirrel Glue. I cut and paste a lot of stuff into my diary. Glue tape and UHU sticks make this an easy process.
That time I had an impromptu dance party of one when Daft Punk was playing.
Kayaking with a friend.
Vuori shorts. I own five pairs of these. They’re so comfy.
Singing karaoke to Say It Ain’t So by Weezer.
Drawing 5K awards. My girlfriend and I drew 5K awards for each other for running on Thanksgiving.
A copy of the award I drew for my girlfriend. iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard. Lighter than a MacBook and does everything I need it to. Generally goes with me everywhere.
Word games. I enjoy solving the NYT Crossword and Mini, as well as the Telegraph PlusWord. They’re fun diversions that make me think about words in new ways.
That time I made a series of “Goosebumps for Adults” covers.
Goosebumps for Adults: Return of the Dead-End Job Pedometer++ app. Makes tracking step counts and streaks super easy, both on my phone and Apple Watch. I’m currently in the middle of a 21-week streak of walking 8K steps a day.
Austin Kleon’s newsletter. He’s always pointing at something interesting or writing about something interesting himself.
Drawing Batman over and over.
A Batman doodles collage. 
A two-panel comic of Batman and Joker. Neck light. For those times when you need to read and there’s poor lighting.
Notebooks. My diaries are written in Zequenz Classic 360 Signature Series (B6 Medium) and my Morning Pages are written in LEUCHTTURM1917 (Medium A5, dotted).
Bose QuietComfort Bluetooth Headphones. These are lightweight and do a great job of blocking noise.
Found faces. I created an album in my Photos app to collect faces found in objects.
Topo Chico. The only sparkling water that matters.
Documentaries. I watched a handful of documentaries, and they all left an impression on me: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth series, Eno, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Crumb, The Rise of Jordan Peterson, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and Hans Zimmer: Hollywood Rebel. On his YouTube channel, Mark Manson released a fascinating mini-documentary titled Understanding the Most Anxious Country in the World.
Standup. Tom Segura's Come Together was my favorite special that I watched this year. This kind of feels like cheating because it’s the only live standup I saw, and live performances enhance the material. He’s still on tour with this material.
All the standup I watched in 2024. Mom’s cooking. Can’t beat it.
Eight Sleep mattress cover. Keeps my bed warm in the winter and cool in the summer. I’ve never slept better.
Making Newspaper Blackout Poems.
The Magic My autographed photo of a screen from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!.
Quotes book. A quote for every day. Three years strong.
The shakshuka from The Fat Hen in Seattle, which is now permanently closed!
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I’m not much of a gamer nowadays, but people at work started playing this and I got sucked in.
Morning Pages. I picked up this practice while making my way through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I’ve felt a noticeable boost in my creativity that feels linked.
My Focus First lifted ink collage.
Rucking. On many walks around town, I’ll have my GoRuck backpack on with a weight plate inside.
Seeing authors live. I was lucky enough to see Chuck Palahniuk, David Sedaris, and Jonathan Haidt on separate occasions, each of them sending my brain in interesting directions.
My mind map after seeing David Sedaris. The IKEA chair where I’m sat for most of my writing.
That time I had an art day with friends and drew a yeti.
Cheap & Crass turning my art into a holiday card!
Photo from Cheap & Crass Grant Kirkhope hosting a listening party and answering fan questions on Bandcamp for DK64 Remastered.
Music for mood alteration. brain.fm is the only focus music I care for. Akira the Don has the best music for motivational workouts. I discovered Stephan Bodzin’s music this year—an electronic sound that thumps without the typical throbbing fatigue.
Walking around Shoreditch and gawking at all the street art.
The tennis ball I placed behind the kitchen drawer organizer that prevents it from sliding around.
Chihuly Garden and Glass. Has to be one of the coolest tourist attractions I’ve seen.
A sliver of the glass sculptures on display. ChatGPT (or as Jordan Jensen called it, Chat Geppetto). Every week I ask ChatGPT to analyze my diary entries for recurring themes and patterns.
Oscar the dog. My parents’ dog that goes nuts every time I visit.
Trees. They are great. Especially the ones outside our apartment window.
Podcasts. The ones I listen to most regularly are Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin (Episode highlight: John Mayer), Modern Wisdom (Episode highlight: Oliver Burkeman), and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Podcast (Episode highlight: Steven Pressfield). They make me actually look forward to my commute and dishwashing.
That time I couldn’t sleep and then drew myself.
Daily meditation. Thirty minutes to see how the dust settles.
My BART Ugly Sweater from 2023. More compliments for this thing than anything else I’ve ever worn.
Listening to full albums as an activity itself, not the backdrop to another activity. I sat and listened to a couple full length albums while doing nothing else. You hear the songs in ways you can’t otherwise.
JBL Go 3. I love traveling with this tiny Bluetooth speaker.
Table Tennis. The best break at work.
My indoor cycle.
Nintendo 64. I dusted off my old Nintendo 64 console this year and had a blast revisiting it. For a while I was hooked on Mario Golf. To mark its 25th anniversary, I booted up Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. One night a friend came over and we made a ruckus with Mario Party 2. Every now and then I still enjoy listening to the Nintendo 64 game music mix I put together a while back.
That time I wrote Megadeth-esque lyrics and drew a skull.
That time I turned an inside joke into a comic.
Perfect Days. I don’t watch many new movies, but I did see this one. A love letter to daily rituals.
That time I drew a comic without any planning.
The lyrics of Softer, Worse, Slower, Weaker by Sam Strake.
Hidden Worlds: The Films of LAIKA exhibit at the Museum of Pop Culture.
Disguising a Christmas tin as an everyday pen holder with the help of some paint and a Zion infinity sticker.
The waiter at the local Thai place that remembers our order.
That time I drew a puppet.
That time I drew fan art of Rick Sanchez.
Timers. Seriously, they’re so useful.
That time “On a stroll in the dark, I passed a man sitting under a streetlight, cigarette in mouth, engrossed in his book. His evening looked untouchable.”
That time a guy told me he was “Loving the day.”
That time I came up with “Albert Catmus.”
Deluxe editions of books. For my birthday my girlfriend gave me a beautiful hardcover copy of Trainspotting from The Folio Society. I love my unique special edition of What Art Does by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse, featuring a hand-painted case.
What Art Does Candle warmer. Candle scents and no smoke!
Pasta bowls. They are the superior dinnerware.
That time I came across a gopher statue.
Creativity prompts. I’ve been slowly making my way through the exercises in Lynda Barry’s Making Comics and Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. When I need additional inspiration, I’ll flip through Adam Kurtz’s 1 Page at a Time
On the left, blind line drawings of skeletons. On the right, faces drawn on random blobs of color. David Whyte. I heard him talk on a couple podcasts (Tetragrammaton Part 1 and Part 2, The Tim Ferriss Show) and fell in love with his enchanting writing. I bought Consolations shortly after discovering him.
That pie chart I made.
Worries have solved zero problems. Finally watching the phenomenal first season of True Detective.
Splashes of color across the sky.
