Reflections on 2024

The year 2024 was a wild ride, and it’s only now that it’s over, and I have some time to pause, I can reflect on what I have achieved in the last 12 months.

It’s also hopefully going to be a reminder to you, dear reader, that you have achieved quite a lot this year aswell and that you should not only be proud of your accomplishments, but that you should reward yourself for doing so as well.

You will also achieve great things in 2025 and hopefully so will I. Let’s do great things together, shall we?

Right now it’s the 2nd of January 2025 as I type this and the holidays are officially over and I will need to start finding work again.

I have a few shifts coming up for the tennis and cricket, but I am always looking to be working every day that I can.
Rent needs to paid every week without fail.

But that’s this year; let’s talk about last year.

The Achievements

At the beginning of 2024, I had enrolled in a Basic Gaming Course. This allows me to work in pubs and casinos that have “pokies” or what some call “slot machines” (gambling).

I tried finding work in various venues that were advertising but I just ended up getting the run around, so I gave up on pursuing it further.

Maybe this year I might have more luck. I know that a local pub was looking for someone in this role, but I was working pretty solidly at the time.

I’ll find the job ad again and check their criteria and then maybe ask in person at some point.

Throughout the year I have had the opportunity to improve my hospitality skills, especially 3 plate carry. I will still need to study and practice 5 plate clear, but so far no one has said anything.

I also started doing work loading and unloading trucks.
It’s something I need to remember to add to my resume.

I had physio for my right arm for a month and a few months later the pain was gone completely. I have full mobility and I am slowly lifting heavier weights again. This helps with the unloading of trucks.

Some of the casual work included supervising children on jumping castles. There are ones that are also waterslides. Those are the best ones because the kids really enjoy it.

Children don’t listen to adults and as a result will hurt each other by accident and start crying, before going back up to slide again.

It’s mostly easy money. I say “mostly” because it can be somewhat stressful.

I started using Duolingo after not using if for a few years. I even started learning and enjoying Klingon and a few other languages, but what really hooked me was starting to learn Japanese.

Ironically, for me personally, I have found it to be the easiest language to learn. The symbols make a sound, like letter combos in English but when put together make different words.

In English we have letter combos like “sh”, “ph”, “ch”, etc.
There are also little words in Japanese that some will say we don’t have the equivalent for in English, but this isn’t necessarily true. English is quite flexible in this regard.

I’ve been here on the Hive blockchain for 7 years!

I started working at the Adelaide Oval officially.
This is retail hospitality, where I serve food and drinks and work the cash register. Sometimes I work two registers at once.

I started a new YouTube channel that is up to 88 subscribers. It did reach 90 at one point but it’s starting to slip down again.

My Regrets

If I had any real regrets from 2024, it was that a lot of my goals weren’t achieved. It’s not that I couldn’t physically or financially do then, I just chose to doom-scroll instead of being productive.

Not finding full time paid work. It seems it doesn’t matter how qualified I am, there is always someone with more experience and better chances to be hired.

I also lost good internet-based friends. Not from being blocked but because they either turned to drugs or they “fell out of love with the camera” and just dropped out of all of their social media platforms altogether.

I have no idea whether or not they are still alive, the worst part is that I have no way to even find out or whether my presence even made a difference and I miss them.

If you are struggling with your mental health, please reach out to someone professional. Please stay.
There are people who genuinely care but might not be able to expresss those sentiments due to embarassment or the fear that it might be taken the wrong way.

That’s all from me today, but if you want more please consider watching my YouTube channel here:
Shane Lockwood’s YouTube Channel

Thank you for reading.

Have a great day.

Shaidon

All content, including photos and text, are produced by myself except where indicated otherwise and sources are always supplied. I do not use A.I. so your upvotes support a genuine human being that produces original material.

The price of Hive reached over US$0.54 yesterday (I haven’t checked today yet). It’s nearly on par with the Aussie dollar. Plus, Hive has been put on a whole heap of listings meaning that more people can play with it.

3Speak is hopefully going to update soon so that when the videos “encode” it will be done on the mobile devices rather than at their end (this was causing issues) I’ll be able to upload a whole lot more often.

As for full time work, I agree. My boss at the Adelaide Oval wouldn’t give me double shifts at the Tennis because she was scared of “burnout”. My focus is on continuing to pay my rent every week and I am not going to burnout. I was lucky to get 3 Tennis shifts this week starting tomorrow and then one at the Cricket. Another Cricket shift next week.

I wasn’t impressed at being sent home at 11pm on New Year’s Eve by the operations crew trying to save money. The shift was supposed to have gone until 1am. They had increased the pay by $5 an hour which was generous of them, but it makes budgeting difficult.

The arrangement I had with TSA would have been ideal if it wasn’t such a toxic environment (it caused anxiety attacks) and they didn’t rotate the shifts so I was without a supervisor. It turns out most of the staff I started with moved on to other jobs.

I know that the Adelaide Oval also do functions every day, so I am hoping to get into that but it’s a different sub group within the Adelaide Oval so they get really iffy about it, where as I just want to work.

Hopefully my reputation within different companies last year means they are more likely to accept me for shifts this year. I need to grind again.