Was 2024 a bad year or does every year that you're alive, steadily get worse and worse until you die?

And other things to think about over Christmas

A photo of a teddy bear staring at a lake

A strange time of year. Time to reflect, I think.

I went on some life-changing journeys this year:

A bus journey from Sligo to Galway. I wrote about this here -
On The Road

A hike from the car garage just outside of Donegal Town to my house just outside the other side of Donegal Town. Here -
The Donegal Odyssey

I also went undercover at TikTok and bravely wrote about it here -
Undercover: The TikTok Tapes

I reflected on some past jobs:

When I got my dream job of sleeping all day in a big comfy bed in a posh flat in London, here -
Goldilocks and the 333 Amazon Deliveries

And when I finally made it to middle management but couldn’t handle the pressure, here -
La Soirée

This year was the first year I attempted the episodic stories.

I wrote about my lonely time in Cannes where I experienced the worst physical pain I’d ever felt. Here -
How To Get Ahead In Advertising

And the time my friends and I contacted the dead, here -
The Ouija’s Bored

And we finally made our way into the world of fashion writing

This one was about hair and hating yourself, here
Preventing The Hereditary

And Shawshank Redemption meets high street shopping, here
Rita Ora and The Primark Redemption

I did a little bit of fiction writing too, this was based on the famous Beezy from Sligo, here -
The Men Who Bring The News

Here are some cultural highlights and things that I found very entertaining.

Film

I directed my first short film this year with a crew and a budget. I think I was quite good at it, but I don’t know if I will ever do it again. It was fun to wear the jacket from Muji, which looked like the type of jacket a director would wear. I really did love wearing that jacket. I know I can wear the jacket anytime, but it really hit differently when I was pretending to know what dafuq I was doing on set.

Below are some films I loved this year. Some are new to the world and some are not new to the world but they were all new to me this year.

Drive My Car - Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Close - Lukas Dhont

Climax - Gasper Noé

The Holdovers - Alexander Payne

I Saw The TV Glow - Jane Schoenbrun

Perfect Days - Wim Wenders

Anatomy of a Fall - Justine Triet

The Settlers - Felipe Gálvez Haberle

Past Lives - Celine Song

The Beast - Bertrand Bonello

Longlegs - Oz Perkins

In-Camera - Naqqash Khalid

The Rocky Road To Dublin - Peter Lennon

The Substance - Coralie Fargeat

Furiosa - George Miller

Music

This year has probably been the least productive year I’ve had since I was 8 years old when it came to music creation. I was certainly not feeling it this year. But hopefully, next year it will come back.

Luckily there are literally millions of people who make much better music than me and they haven’t hit a wall. So there was lots of great new music but I find it so hard to remember it all, but the ones below stuck out the most I think.

And as someone who often doesn’t appreciate, relate to or care much for popular things, I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself completely in love with the song ‘Good Luck, Babe’ by Chappel Roan. I’m not gonna lie when I first heard it I thought it was a CMAT deep cut but then I realised the song has literally been played over 1 billion times on Spotify alone and even after I found out it was maybe the most popular song of the year, I still loved it. Maybe I’m going soft.

Nilüfer Yanya - My Method Actor

Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood

MJ Lendermen - Manning Fireworks

Tyler, The Creator - Chromakopia

Laura Marling - Patterns in Repeat

Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us

MK.gee - Two Star and The Dream Police

Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer

Vince Staples - Dark Times

Clairo - Charm

Adrianne Lenker - Bright Future

All music and film recommendations are welcome. Please send them my way. Either on here or email.

Thanks so much for reading the newsletter this year. I slacked a little, so I’m going heavy on it in 2025. It might surprise you to hear this but 90% of the time I hate talking/writing about myself, that’s why I tried to move into the fiction stuff but I’m not talented enough to do fiction so I have to just fit in the nonfiction story writing about me and things I’ve done in the 10% of time that it doesn’t make my skin crawl. But next year I am planning to take a lot more drugs and drink a lot more than I have been recently so that will hopefully help me write more often.

Have a beautiful time off from work if you are off from work and have a lovely time with your family or your friends or whoever you will be spending the next week or so with.

Lots of love

Thom

Xx