Wrapping up 2024

I’ve just read last year’s wrap up and it made me quite sad. I really was in a rough spot, mentally. What makes me the most sad though is I couldn’t honestly tell you I’m in a much better place. Things are on the up though.

I don’t really have a will to sit here and write a wrap up post either this year, but it’s a really important way for me to close the door on one year and open the door to a new one, so with that in mind, let’s look at this year, shall we?

Work

That’s what you’re here for, so let’s start there. It’s been a mixed bag this year.

First of all, I did indeed produce a CSS course, as promised. The process of producing it has absolutely killed me, but I’d say it’s probably the best work I’ve done in this industry. The combined effort of the Set Studio team to hit a very hard internal deadline — the hardest thing to achieve — was top class too.

For so many years, I’ve had this fragmented set of advice, methodologies and strategies which producing a course has allowed me to finally codify into something neat and tidy. It’s been written in a way that I hope, will see it age well too.

The focus of the course is CSS, but what I really wanted to do — and what I’m confident I have achieved — is teach the importance of soft skills. I’m so into soft skills that I call them “core skills” and if I were to summarise Complete CSS, I’d say it pushes your abilities as a developer way beyond what a strictly technical course would do because everything is centred around using core skills to simplify things, which in turn results in better code while also, opening doors to career progression.

Producing a course has come at a cost though. I near enough vanished from my actual job at points — running Set Studio — and it’s definitely negatively affected things and the people who work there. I feel unbelievably guilty for putting so much onto the team and allowing stuff to slip because of that. Thankfully, I won’t be producing a big course like that again!

The course — and the bespoke system we built — was a necessary thing to do though because producing courses with Piccalilli is going to allow us to specialise on what we do best as an agency: helping good organisations grow by hyper-focusing on everything user-facing. Sure, we’ve always done that, but we’ve also had to do corporate work and back-end/integration work too, which has drained the life out of us. The problem is, that stuff pays. Having the passive revenue from courses really takes the pressure off and lets us focus on what we do best. I really want us to partner with other agencies that specialise in the back-end and integration stuff in the new year because that combined skillset will only benefit clients, as I see it.

Speaking of clients, it’s still rough out there in client services, but it’s getting incrementally better. Another reason for us setting up a course system on Piccalilli was to help other independents suffering from the struggles, rightly get paid fairly for their work. We’ve already started the groundwork with a couple of extremely talented educators. More on that next year 👀

All-in-all though, it’s been great to get Piccalilli up and running again, while also completely redesigning it — hopefully showcasing what we’re made of. We’ve put a lot of work into that thing this year and I couldn’t be prouder of the team for pulling it off.

Hobbies

It’s been a quiet year for hobbies. I’ve worked too fucken hard and on the evenings, I’ve been too damn tired, so we’ve just rotted on the couch watching TV and films, so not much to report on that front.

I’ve also not been to the gym all year, which is really poor form for me. I’m really feeling that at the moment too. I’ll add that to my resolutions to get back to the level of fitness I was at, at the start of last year.

I’ve also had a bad year in terms of collecting music, only adding 2 records to the collection. Again, I want to improve that next year and spend a lot less time with streaming services.

Resolutions

Let’s see how I did on my 2024 resolutions:

• Aim to double the team at Set Studio: I don’t know what I was thinking making this a resolution. We work really well as a small, tight-knit team, so that’s how we’ll stay until we need to hire.
• Release a course: ✅
• Get back to being a prolific writer and content creator: Not quite prolific, but I’ve written north of 120k words — if not more when you account for newsletters etc — this year which I’m happy with.
• Try to be calmer about finance (working class upbringing never rubs off): It’s been a tough transition but I’d class this as half a ✅
• Quit nicotine: produce a course and quit nicotine? Lmao, on to next year instead

Here’s my 2025 resolutions:

• Facilitate a complete redesign of Set Studio’s brand and messaging that shows what we’re very good at and what a huge impact we’ve had on clients already
• Actually quit nicotine
• Release two courses for other authors on Piccalilli
• More hobbies, less overworking
• Sort my overall fitness and strength

Wrapping up

In terms of achievement it’s been a good year, but I don’t feel amazing about it. Maybe it’s just exhaustion from overworking at this point. I’m not gonna sit here and say “2025 is going to be the year”, but, I am going into the new year with a mindset change for sure. I’ve let apathy take the wheel too much and even though our industry triggers a lot of that, there’s a lot of good happening too. I need to remember that more.

I want to wrap up thanking everyone who worked with Set Studio, who purchased Complete CSS and who read content on Piccalilli. Your support is appreciated more than you could ever realise. What I can say is there’s a lot more coming next year — especially in the case of Piccalilli. 2024 really was the beginning of the future on that platform.

I hope you, dear reader, have a great remaining holiday period and I’ll catch you in 2025 👋