2024 Recap

Travel

What a weird way to pick a travel direction! I've been 2 times in Yerevan, Armenia, and 3 times in Italy: Rome, Milan and Florence.

Thinking about adding a dedicated space in my digital garden for travel. Kinda reinventing a travel blog in 2025.

Health, Habits & Sports

Running

I've finally started running! I've been running regularly for 6 months in a row until autumn depression sneaked in. In general, I started to love running so I'll be back as soon as the weather allows.

Skiing

After a few attempts, I finally moved my ski equipment to Portugal. It had a long way by car from Russia through the mountains of Georgia. Then there was a delivery to Armenia, where I picked it up and carried it with me to Portugal.

Why so complicated?

There are troubles in sending things from Russia to elsewhere. Ski equipment is considered to be an expensive good and sometimes alerts customs. My mate had to pay the full price for a pair of his 10-year-old skis because he was not so careful in choosing delivery routes.

Now I'm fully charged for a proper ski ride this winter.

Rollerblading

I completely forgot to start the rollerblading season which is unacceptable.

Walking

I was quite disappointed that my average daily steps have decreased for the last few years. WTF?!

Hobbies

Video Games

I haven't almost played video games since 2006-2007. Usually, even if I get engaged in it, I play intensively for a short period and quickly lose any interest. Maybe for good, but sometimes I feel like I'm missing a whole bunch of a cultural stratum (can we call it that?)

Last year I bought a Steam Deck and started to play games! Played a few remastered things from my childhood, and it was an exceptional pleasure! Didn't spend much time on it which is also nice.

Self Hosting & System Administration

I think I've shifted to a whole new level in my self-hosting and IT infrastructure. Made a few upgrades in my homelab, dived into NixOS, and migrated a few things on it. Have a lot of plans of how to have fun with that. But not enough time, unfortunately.

Digital Garden

In February 2024 I turned my blog into a digital garden growing right from my Obsidian vault.

Open Source

I made a significant update to Puredux and finally implemented a thing that I was thinking over procrastinating for the last few years: SwiftletModel

Work & Finance

Freelance

I've finally made a shift from a totally full-time format of recent years back to a more freelance-like working setup. That perked up me up significantly and made me feel much more energized.

I've revived my old Upwork account and quickly re-gained top-rated status there. Will see how it goes.

In general, I think that the time of over-bloated software engineering teams has gone (for some time) together with the cheap-to-get funding and low rates. Freelance format might be a good fit when everybody is on budget and pays for the result.

Rent, Mortgage & Real Estate

I've been thinking and rethinking a lot about the topic recently. Real estate is bothering me more than ever and now I have a lot to add to my old post on the topic: Why real estate is bothering me.

Finance & Investments

The only reason why there is a movie about Michael Burry, but not me is that he is much more of an extrovert.

Hit the all-time high this year and in November I closed my brokerage account after 13 years: