Where do I even start? What a year. Honestly what the fuck just happened.

Work

A significant chunk of my year has revolved around s&box. Working on the engine, improving performance, fixing things, trying to make the platform better. We released in April, our reviews were shit, the motivation I managed to gather at the start of the year dropped pretty quickly through summer (though the reviews were hardly the only thing going wrong at the time), then it picked back up again around the end of September.

I achieved a few things here but I'm not gonna talk about it too much because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Personal Life

Jesus Christ.

I think this year might have taught me more about relationships, trust, attachment, and myself than I really wanted to learn. There's been a lot of love and a lot of heartbreak and a frankly ridiculous amount of emotional yo-yoing. I've had to confront the fact that loving somebody and having a healthy relationship with them aren't necessarily the same thing.

You can care about someone enormously, understand why things have gone wrong, and still not know whether you should keep trying or finally let go. I've spent a lot of time in between those two things.

I've also realised I'm not very good at uncertainty - I like knowing where I stand, what happens next, and what I can do to fix something. My therapist says it's a very "male brained" thing. Unfortunately, people don't work like software, they're not logical, they're not machines, you can't just fix things.

I've made mistakes, I've had some pretty difficult conversations, and I've spent far too much time spiralling about things I can't control. And I'm still figuring a lot of it out.

Made of Glass

I've also managed to do a particularly impressive amount of physical damage to myself this year - a bruised face, stitches in my chin, broken wrists, knee injuries. At various points I looked like I'd lost a fight with a moving vehicle (because I had). It would be nice if I could simply not injure myself from now until the end of 2027.

Music

One thing that hasn't changed this year is how much music means to me. I've spent a stupid amount of time listening to Nine Inch Nails, playing with synths, working on lyrics, coming up with song ideas, obsessing over production details. I've messed around with industrial music quite a lot. There's something satisfying about having a creative outlet that doesn't need to be productive, or have an end, or be commercially successful, or lead to a career, or whatever.

What comes next

Something I've noticed this year is that I've started questioning things that I previously took for granted, especially about halfway through. My career, relationships, finances, priorities, what I want life to look like.. I've been putting myself out there more, meeting people, thinking about friendships, exploring opportunities, and working out what makes me happy outside of sitting at my desk all day.

I'm not going to pretend I've become a really well-adjusted person that's figured everything out, because it's quite the opposite - some days I feel like I'm making real progress, other days I feel like I'm making the same mistakes I've already made a million times before.

I think one of the more positive things to come out of this year is that I've started actually doing something about the things I'm unhappy with, rather than just putting up with them. I'm not particularly good at it yet, and I'm probably going to continue making a complete fucking mess of things occasionally, but at least I'm trying.

So?

Was it a good year? I genuinely don't know.

Professionally, I've done some work I'm proud of, but I could do better. Personally, I've experienced some great moments, and some genuinely awful ones. Creatively, I've had fun, I've experimented, learnt things, and remembered why I enjoy making stuff.

I've made a lot of mistakes, I've had people surprise me - both positively and negatively - and I've found myself in situations that I never thought I'd be in. And I think I've learned that I need to get better at recognising the difference between something worth fighting for, and something I'm just afraid to lose - I think that's been the biggest lesson this year.

We're only at the end of October so there's still plenty of time for something to go spectacularly right... or spectacularly wrong. Hopefully the former. I'm not going to end this with some profound statement about personal growth or about how everything happens for a reason because I don't believe in any of that shit. Sometimes things just happen, you've got to work out what to do with them.

Somehow, I'm still looking forward to seeing what happens next.