2024 Wrap
2024 has been a year of cowboys, chaos, and creative sparks. The highlight of my work this year was Don’t Drink the Water, a trippy music video featuring a cowboy in the desert who drinks from an oasis and spirals into a psychedelic journey. It was an idea I’d been carrying around for ages, and finally bringing it to life felt rewarding and, frankly, just a lot of fun. On the flip side, not everything went according to plan. I started remaking my first short film, Self Portrait, with high hopes of creating something leaps ahead of the original, but I eventually abandoned the project. AI video is still too clunky and awkward to achieve the quality I wanted, and wrestling with its limitations drained my enthusiasm.
This year taught me the value of minimalism—not in the trendy, bare-all-your-surfaces kind of way, but in terms of simplifying to make room for what matters. My Mac Mini is the perfect metaphor: sleek, compact, and minimalist in design, yet incredibly powerful. It shifted my approach to both work and life. Instead of overloading a project with complexity, I now aim to strip things down to their core and deliver more impact with less effort. Minimalist ideals have also saved me time in everyday life—fewer decisions about what to cook, what to wear, or how to organize my day means more time for the things I actually care about.
On the personal growth front, I hit a 100-day streak on Duolingo learning Chinese, which has been fun and surprisingly useful. 你好！我现在只会非常基础的中文，但我正在快速学习。 I started journaling for a while, too, but as life became chaotic, I let it slip. That chaos also disrupted my attempts to stick to a routine, which remains my Achilles’ heel. Whenever something shakes up my rhythm, it takes me months to get back on track. To counter that, I’ve been trying to implement daily to-do lists with clear objectives, and while it’s not perfect, it’s a start.
I did travel this year, though not as much as I’d hoped. A trip to the Netherlands to visit Jeroen was a highlight—I loved the culture and food—but anxiety around booking trips held me back from exploring more. Choice paralysis and overthinking often got the better of me when it came to booking hotels or flights. Next year, I want to be more spontaneous with my travel, even if it’s just visiting local towns on weekends.
Financially, the year was a mixed bag. I earned a decent amount from the gig with lipstick on the Vodafone commercial, however my website stubbornly brought in £2.50, which isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it’s a start. My biggest expense was a £2,000 Mac Mini, which I’d argue was worth every penny. On the bright side, my small investment portfolio grew by 14.02%, and I’m eager to dive deeper into investing next year. My goal is to invest with a more substantial amount of money, with a higher frequency of trades, if I can pull off 14% profit in half a year investing once every few weeks, then I should be able to achieve a lot more with a higher frequency of trades and a larger initial investment. I also want to transition away from sporadic online gigs toward more stable income streams that align with my larger ambitions, whether thats from investments, a professional relationship with the newly found AI video studio Lipstick, royalties and passive income from my website and personal projects, or something entirely unexpected.
Looking ahead to 2025, I’m determined to stick to a routine for the entire year—no matter what life throws at me. I also want to travel somewhere new every weekend, whether it’s a distant city or just the next town over. And if I manage to achieve my investment goals or secure a significant, stable source of income, a trip to Japan might finally be on the cards, complete with a wagyu steak indulgence. Beyond that, my long-term vision remains the same: I’m aiming to become the first one-person £1 billion company, using AI, creativity, and investing to build my wealth without compromising my values.
As the year closes, I’m grateful for the lessons learned, the creative milestones reached, and the challenges that kept me on my toes. Here’s to 2025—a year of bold plans, big dreams, and hopefully fewer abandoned projects.
