2024 Highlights

As the year wraps up I spent some time thinking about how it went, and what I’m hoping for in 2025.

Personal

My word for 2024 was connection – a correction from a multi year pandemic that flowed neatly into [living under a rock] writing a book. I wanted to prioritize being a better friend, and rebuild my sense of community locally. As a guiding principle throughout the year, this was so helpful, and I feel dramatically better about this aspect of my life than I did a year ago. I’m looking forward to more connection in 2025.

This was also the year that we finally finished the multi year building project of renovating the attic. It’s been a bit of an ordeal for a number of reasons that I won’t get into, but super happy to have the house the way we want it with an extra bedroom and bathroom, and moving things around such that we can each have an office.

Adventures

• A wedding in Sydney, where I got to see many old friends from when I lived there. A brief but fantastic layover in Hong Kong. 10 incredible days in Bali.
• A weekend in London for my birthday, we saw the Sister Act musical (amazing), the Cruel Intentions musical (pure nostalgia), caught up with friends, and saw some fantastic exhibitions at the V&A and the Tate.
• A weekend at Castlemartyr for the art show (beautiful).
• A trip to the Inchydoney spa (2023’s birthday present from my parents).
• Another weekend in London, this time to see Nils Frahm (and also many friends).
• A brief overnight trip to Glengarrif for a friend’s birthday, we took in Garinish island and the ever weird, ever wonderful, Ewe Experience.
• A week with my parents visiting Killarney (the Muckross hotel, right in my favorite part of the national park) and returning to the beautiful Liss Ard estate.
• Another wedding, this time in Dehradun, India, with a few days in Chandigarh (to see the incredible Nek Chand’s stunning rock garden) and an all too brief but fantastic stop in Delhi, where we saw Humayun’s tomb and did some important shopping for Hamper Season.
• One night at the Cliff House in Ardmore for Bas’ birthday. Absolutely gorgeous.
• A few days in Venice for the biennale, always amazing. Stayed at the wonderful Ca’ Bonfadini. You can read about it in a (rare) public edition of Where the Hell is Cate.
• A brief visit to Sheen Falls (beautiful) for Lorge chocolate for Hamper Season.
• A weekend in Dublin for the ballet and to see friends.

Professional

2024 will always be the year my book came out, in print in April, and as an audio book in November – a product of years of work. Aside from locking myself away [at Castlemartyr] for a brutal week of edits in January, and having to read it 2-3 more times during proofs, most of the work was done and I got to think about what comes next. Still no answers there but I’m trying to give myself time!

I didn’t do a great job at promoting the book, but I did do a number of podcasts, a book signing at LeadDev, and a talk at Leading Eng. I have some more things planned for next year already, so that’s exciting.

This year I also took on another advisory role with Twill. I’m really excited about this, because I find the product compelling – currently hiring feels a bit like candidate and hiring manager AIs talking to each other, and it’s tough to separate the signal from the noise – making for a bad experience on both sides. Twill cuts through that directly to well qualified, vetted candidates. I also just genuinely love advisory work, and am super happy to have another opportunity to do it.

For my own professional development, I took the Co-Active Leadership Workshop – which was really great and I want to try and figure out the time and money for the full program. I also did my first back of the room assisting for Fundamentals, which was interesting. I’m fascinated by the Co-Active facilitation model, and the idea of experiential learning.

I passed the four year mark at DuckDuckGo, which was interesting – in previous jobs this was the time at which I decided to move on. I thought about it, of course, partly because I think it’s healthy to think about this every year, and partly because passing the 4 year milestone for the first time invited deeper thought. Ultimately though, I decided to stay put because 1) I’m working on something huge and interesting, 2) I’m enjoying being with a team I’ve built up and the work of good-to-great, and 3) this market is terrible, why subject myself to it unnecessarily.

2025?

I’m not a big planner and I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I do like the act of setting a word and an intention. For 2025, I picked “health”.

First and most obviously, this is about prioritizing physical health. 2024 was a bit up and down here, and I would like to be more consistent.

Secondly, I think there’s a broader meaning here – about healthy behaviours and patterns. I’ve been thinking a lot about garbage in garbage out for the mind – this stage of capitalism is so intent on making us consumers of low value content, and I know I personally need better quality inputs there to have better quality thinking myself.

As always, the word starts as an intention and my experience with it will no doubt evolve over the course of the year. I’m looking forward to seeing where this one goes!

Thanks as always for following along; wishing you a wonderful 2025.