was how I began 2024. It has offered me some needed meaning and momentum in life. I love the kids I care for, and I consider myself very lucky to help look after them.

My job is loud, but I can handle that.

What sets me over the edge is, after a long hard loud day, I go run an errand at a store, and there’s music blasting loud enough that it sounds like it’s inside of my head.

Or when I’m out at a café or a diner, and the music is so loud I can barely hear my company.

Apparently, many other people have the ability to tune out extra noise. I unfortunately lack that ability, and I’m goddam cantankerous about it.

For that reason, enjoying peace and quiet has been important to me this year.

But for times when I’m out and I have no control over the volume, I’ve started carrying reusable earplugs. They don’t cancel noise, but they soften it so that I can usually hear my own thoughts again.

Now, when I’m out shopping, I can hear Maroon 5 blasting in the distance, rather than having Adam Levine personally serenade my eardrums.

Speaking of sensory sensitivities – I’ve been reading a lot about autism (and neurodiversity in general) this year.

I’ve had many dear autistic friends throughout my life, and I work with autistic kids. As such, I want to learn how I can be a better ally for autistics.

Some books I read:

• Unmasking Autism by Devon Price
• Spectrums: Autistic Transgender People in Their Own Words
• Demystifying Disability by Emily Ladau
• Autism Spectrum Disorder: What Every Parent Needs to Know (2nd edition)

and some web pages worth revisiting:

• About autism (via ASAN)
• For Whose Benefit?: Evidence, Ethics, and Effectiveness of Autism Interventions
• Autistic self-diagnosis, yay or nay?

2024 was the year I finally said goodbye to Windows, which I’ve used all my life up to this point.

I’d been tempted to leave for a while, and the AI pop-ups + Copilot shit finally made me get off my ass and do it.

I haven’t looked back. Choosing my computer’s OS has made me appreciate it more.

The world of FOSS is inspiring to me because it is proof that we can do things out of goodwill rather than competition.

Delovely had three major updates in 2024; you can read about those in more detail on the log.

Long story short, I’ve been improving my humble coding skills at my own pace. It’s been a rewarding experience and keeps my brain sharp.

I released some of my poetry into cyberspace, shared some thoughts and photos, and hope to share more in the future.

Finally, I’ve been getting more serious about organizing the poems I’ve written.

I’m still considering where and how I may want to publish it, but a basic, organized manuscript exists – and that’s better than scattered notes and files.

is a game that has always been recommended to me, but that I didn’t try until this year.

I’m not a super neat and orderly person, so the thought of creating a perfectly arrayed, meticulously landscaped virtual farm did not appeal to me.

Thankfully, the game neither requires nor specifically rewards this! My farm is a pretty natural-looking Meadowlands farm where the animals have largely free range. Plus, with the Ornithologist mod, there are familiar bird species that fly around it, too.

The characters are lovable. It’s a cozy experience when I’ve needed to lay low after a full day of work, or when I couldn’t actually spend time outside during the heatwave.

I’ve gotten very comfortable with my mp3 collection. Most of my mp3s are of pre-1990s music. So it’s about time I got into something new.

Some new(er) albums I’ve enjoyed this past year:

• Shelter by Alice Phoebe Lou
• Slow Burn by Baby Rose
• Bedouine by Bedouine
• Charm by Clairo

But I still go back to the oldies. One of the coolest songs I heard for the first time this year was Blossom Dearie’s “You Have Lived in Autumn” – particularly this slightly rough, weirdly modern-sounding demo session.

This past summer, Vilray released a banger about a tortoise.

“Central Park West” was another piece of music that moved me this year.

I bought this at a local craft store. The far-off googly eyes and the gaping smile cracked me up, but they’re also useful for holding a mouthful of cotton balls, pens, hair ties, etc.

My boyfriend says it’s a martian or a yip-yip. He bought me some more for my birthday.

While the U.S. election got uglier and uglier later into the year, I had a sudden urge to rewatch Columbo, a murder mystery series from the 70s featuring a bumbling, unassuming sleuth played by Peter Falk.

In a world of cybertrucks, trump victories, and relentless cruelty, it has been comforting to imagine the ultra-wealthy getting called out for their crimes.

I have a lovely memory this year of my friend and I sitting by a huge lake, watching tiny birds flit by. She told me they’re called chimney swifts.

While I know most of the birds that I know through having read lots of bird books as a kid, she had identified it with an app called Merlin. I wanted an app like that but for plants and fungi as well as wildlife, and I found one: iNaturalist.

iNaturalist helped me identify a bird that is very rare in my area: a black-bellied whistling duck.

He was all by himself. I wonder how he fared.

I love tech that helps me learn more about the world around me.

The comfiest things to sleep in.

Like yip-yips, some human creations are simply perfect.