Another year comes to a close. In this post we look back on 2024. It was quite the year. Lots of ups and downs. Here is the quick summary.
About this time last year, I started watching videos on gliding and thought “I should give this a try.”
I was getting a bit bored of powered flight. The reason being is that it’s quite procedural:
Gliding is more of a sport. More of an adventure. You still have the procedural parts but you strip away all the non-essentials (including the engine) and are left with the raw experience of flying.
I’m not yet fully qualified but on track to do that in 2025.
It’s been like coming home really. When I dreamed of being a pilot, this was more what I had in mind.
Having watched other people make videos of themselves gliding, I decided to do the same and launched my own YouTube channel: Soar with Simon.
After all, someone has to make the content I’m watching. I thought that I should pay the community back by making some of my own.
At the time of writing I have 24 subscribers. Who knows what that number might be by the end of 2025?
I talked in this post about starting my journey with The Open University and getting a degree in Maths.
In 2024 I got a distinction in both of my modules. These were MU123 and M140. I wrote about my first year at The Open University here.
I am currently studying MST124, which is my hardest module to date. I plan to finish this in June and start the final module of level one, MST125 in October this year.
This will mean I’m slightly behind where I wanted to be at this point. However, I am trying my best to get a distinction on each module and given that MST124 is significantly tougher, I want to make sure I give myself the best possible chance of doing that.
Sadly, in the last weeks of December 2024, I was made redundant. I talked about the instability at work in my review of 2023.
It got worse in 2024, we had three chief technologists in a year. They didn’t all have the title of CTO but each was the leader of the technology tribe within the business. They all had mutually incompatible visions of what technology should be at the company. The latest one decided it would be better if the Polish team was led from Poland, which is logical even if it hurts.
It does bring to a close 20 years of continuous employment. Here was my post, from 2004, announcing that I’d started at the job.
When I boarded the train to East Didsbury on October 1st, 2004 I did not in my wildest dreams think that journey would come to an end some 20 years later. I never had any intention of staying somewhere that long.
There were always reasons for me to stay. Be it share options, bonuses etc. I met so many people, some of whom are great friends to this day. I have watched folks who came in as fresh faced technologists, grow and mature and then set out on their own adventures.
Now it’s finally my turn to start my next adventure. That chapter is over and on some level that feels good. A change was needed.
I got a good exit package so I can take some time to recharge and reset in 2025.
On January 21st, 2025 it’ll be three years since I had a drink. When I started that journey I was full of doubt that it could be done. Drinking 2-3 times a week, which had accelerated over covid, was such an ingrained habit that snapping out of it felt impossible at the time.
A lot has changed in that three years. I went to Cambridge and did the CTO programme, I got back in to education with The Open University. I started flying again. These are three things I would probably not have done if I had not quit. They are three things I am grateful for.
I think my overall health, both mental and physical, has improved too. It should also reduce my long-term risk of developing cancer like my Dad did.
Overall, it has been a good change even if it does mean you’re a little more boring socially.
The tradition is that you’re meant to start the new year with a bunch of New Year’s resolutions.
I’ve met that impulse with the introduction of my now page. This is a page where I’ll regularly provide updates on my current goals and what I’m doing to complete them.
The “Now” page will change over time, so let’s capture what we said I’d do at the start of 2025 for accountability:
We’ll see in my review of 2025 whether I achieved these personal goals.