2024 Year in Review Part 1: Background, Stats, and Books

On December 31, 2004, I was working a New Year’s Eve event for the cash. As midnight approached, I tried to look back over the year and think about some of the things I had done … only to come up blank. So, the next day I started what I called a diary. However, it was less a diary detailing my innermost thoughts and more of a journal to track what I had done during the day. (Historic note: my first entry talks about needing to reformat my hard drive and losing some data, then states “I’m looking into getting something called a USB Flash Drive so it won’t happen again.”)

In March of that year, I decided to start tracking what media I consumed, as I was unable to remember if I had seen a movie before. (I only gloss over major news events, as that is easy to find.) Over the twenty years of keeping this journal, I have tracked highs and lows: my move to Los Angeles, Kate’s turns in the hospital, and more.

I have used the information a few times now to write a year in review. But this year, I decided I would include stats as well. The overall year in review ended up being 11 pages in Word, so I’ve broken this up into several parts.

Stats

Media consumed: in summary (in other words, having fun with stats).

• books:
  • 1 book completely read
  • 2 books continued from 2023
  • 1 book started
  • 2,475 works in my AO3 history for 2024
• movies:
  • at least 70 movies
    • 11 because Dean Stockwell was in it
    • 8 because Scott Bakula was in it
    • 3 because Michael Sheen was in it
    • and honorable mention to Martin Freeman and Judge Reinhold, both of whom had 1 I watched because they were in it
• television:
  • around 67 television shows/seasons watched, with 391 actual episodes
    • 5 shows because of Michael Sheen (9 episodes total)
    • 3 shows because of Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap: 13 episodes so far)
    • 4 shows because of Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap‘s 13 episodes and Looking season 1 – 8 episodes – and even though he’s not in it, Looking season 2 which also has 8 episodes)
    • honorable mention to Alan Tudyk (3 seasons of Resident Alien), Andrew Scott (Ripley), Benedict Cumberbatch (3 episodes of Eric), Con O’Neill (Midsomer Murders), Jim Meskiman/Chris O’Dowd (The Big Door Prize season 2), Martin Freeman (The Responder series 2), and Michael Shur (Man on the Inside season 1)
    • 12 shows that were comic-book related (90 episodes – Agatha All Along watched twice)
    • 8 shows reviewed for The Geekiary (73 episodes – Agatha All Along watched twice; 4 of which I may not have watched otherwise)
    • highest watched series: a tie between The Flash and Shōgun with 19 episodes each
• Theatre/Visual Arts:
  • 20 cultural-related events
    • 1 visual art show attended
    • 1 award show attended
    • 7 in-person theatre shows (2 of which were technically longer versions of previews seen at Midsummer Scream)
    • 8 recorded productions (two of which were seen twice)
• Podcasts:
  • 11 podcasts, with 102 episodes
    • 4 episodes/shows because of Michael Sheen
    • 1 episode/show because of autism
  • 6 episodes of CMV produced
• My Writing:
  • articles on CMV
    • 58 total
      • breakdown by who:
        • 43 of which were for The Geekiary
        • 15 for my own
        • 6 were podcast episodes
      • breakdown by month:
        • 2 in January
        • 7 in February
        • 9 in March
        • 9 in April
        • 3 in May
        • 7 in June
        • 1 in July
        • 3 in August
        • 4 in September
        • 7 in October
        • 5 in November
        • 1 in December
  • fanfic
    • 4 old stories posted
    • 4 new stories posted
  • Dreamwidth
    • 24 posts
      • 8 were posting info about old podcasts
      • 3 were about my fics being posted
      • 2 new about my fandom side
      • 9 were my thoughts about Quantum Leap (see television)

Books

I finished one book (the audiobook of the book version of John Moe’s The Hilarious World of Depression and although it’s harrowing at times, I fully recommend it), continued two books, and started an audio version of Stephen King’s The Langoliers. I was a little sad (and disappointed) I read so little, but then I scraped my AO3 history and played with the stats and … well, I am no longer sad about not reading much.

In part 2, I delve into the movies I watched over 2024, ending with my recommendations.