2024 was a funny old year in many ways. I’d labelled it my Year of Business. There were a lot of positives, and indeed I end the year in an exciting position going into 2025… but the entire year has been plagued with underlying health issues.

I very much want to get back into competition. This year, more than most, I’ve missed it, and as my students have now reach a stage where they are ready to start to compete, it’s only going to get worse. I want to be ready and am trying to put in all the right measures to get back in shape.

I started 2024 going on some blood pressure medication. Nothing too serious, but not surprising given my age and weight. But it took a while to get right. The first prescription didn’t agree with me, to the point where I honestly don’t remember much about January and February. But once I had it all under control, I came out of that fog with severe mobility issues. I can’t walk more than a hundred metres without my back and hips locking up and causing me incredible pain.

Getting to the bottom of that has been a journey. I did physio to enable me to do things I could already do. I had a chiro refer me back to the doctor. I had doctors that sent me to the hospital, only for the hopital to refer me back to my GP. I had doctors admit that they hadn’t done the tests they said they had, and then diagnose that my vitamin D was low (although I’ve since learned, it wasn’t that low).  Consequently, I spent much of the year trying to up my Vitamin D intake in the knowledge that it can take a long time to recover from a serious deficiency. I’ve since gone back to the chiro, but they seem to be having no effect.  As a result, I feel I’ve got nowhere.  However, they did confirm that my entire lower back and pelvis are all locked up.

The issue has overshadowed everything. I can’t exercise. I can barely walk. Even simple things like cooking are a painful chore. I’ve not been anywhere this year or really done anything.

No, that’s a lie. Outside of my back and my inability to hobble anywhere other than over the road to the supermarket, the year proved pretty good.

This year at SWOTS (School of the Sword Swindon) I started teaching weapons I’ve not actually studied or taught before. We started the year with Sword & Cape. That was a lot of fun. We then went onto single sidesword. It was my first time teaching or learning any dall’Agocchie. I think it went pretty well. We spent the summer learning two swords, which I really enjoyed, before ending the year with some Alfieri single rapier.

Attendance has been steady but the group has such tight communication that if one of them drops out, they all quickly follow. It’s for this reason that I’ll probably be likely to do an intake this coming year.

Writing also started to come together. My aim for this year was to launch under my own name. Sometime around the summer, I decided I wanted to create a multiverse of books, and then spent most of the summer doing some retconning.

I relaunched The Four Realms in October, with the plan to follow up with a book a month, but then work happened.

I really enjoy my day job. It’s probably the best it can be without it being my own business. I’m good at my job, it has real meaning and my co-workers are lovely people. I secretly think they were worried I might move onto a new position elsewhere when I have no intent or reason to move. So they offered me training as a way to keep me happy. Problem is that with my job, short of doing a law degree, there’s not any training that’s really useful.

But we found a graduate diploma which is basically a law degree with fewer modules, and work agreed to finance it. I’ll believe it when I see it, I thought. Things change so rapidly in the business that I was expecting the budget to disappear before full agreement could be made.

But it all got signed off in October and in mid- November I got access. The problem it’s a full on course. I’ve seen it as a proper opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. But somehow, I’m expected to do 1200 hours of study before exams in April – June and that works out an average of 10 hours a day of study.

So I’ve been in a bit of a panic. I’ve been gifted an amazing opportunity and want to do well, and as a result, almost everything else has been put on the backburner to give me a chance of reaching April with all the study and coursework done.

In doing so, I’ve learnt that I maybe need to prioritise secondary things so that they keep ticking along slowly instead of just being fully delayed.  Even 4 hours of editing a week would help keep the books ticking along while I study.

It’s something I need to perfect in 2025. Luckily I hadn’t really started to build momentum yet so if I have to delay the full ramp up until Summer 2025, that’s a price worth paying… but at the same time it’s annoying. Perhaps if I had thought it likely for it to all be approved and move ahead, I would have planned around it. But we live and learn.

It means that the first quarter to half of 2025 is going to be dominated by study and exams. I’m OK with that. I had planned to go monk mode with the books, anyway. This just changes what I do with that time. It’s not like I can go anywhere with my mobility issues is it?

My only other major aim from last year was to start to learn Japanese. One year on, and I’ve just passed my 1 year streak on Duolingo. I’ve taken my time, refusing to move on until the revision exercises on modules become something I ace every single time. I plan to keep it going in 2025, but will worry less about the leagues. Progress is progress.

So whilst there have been some frustrations, 2024 ends on a lot of promise, both in terms of writing and my career. If I can follow through with those plans without anything coming along to disrupt them, and sort my mobility out, 2025 could end up being very successful.

Hopefully I’ll not only get a new qualification, I’ll get a few books out as well.

But I suspect it’ll very much be a year for keeping my head down and just getting on with things. Who knows though? I should have learned by now that it’s hard to plan out an entire year.

For the mobility issues alone, I won’t miss 2024. It was a pretty boring year for me overall, being unable to go anywhere or do anything. If I could wish for anything for 2025, it would be the ability to move around come 12 months from now.