2024 is over.

Well, almost.

“One more day!” I sing.

(Can you guess the tune without hearing it? There’s a free lifetime subscription to Adulting Sucks for the first person who guesses the song correctly in the comments below. Hint: It’s from a musical.)

I’m not running to the finish line of 2024. Instead, a face-stealing demon is dragging me across.

2024 wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either.

The highlights? I saw my siblings.

The low light? Death and the aberration of “AI”.

I want a Midori and lemonade right now. I lament my cupboard lays as bare as old Mother Hubbard’s.

My son’s cat, Anubis, is claiming his territory in a corner of my study. At least he has the manners to spray on the used paper next to my trash bin.

It makes it easier to clean up.

One good thing to come out of 2024 is my new habit of recycling cans and bottles. It’s surprising the routines we start or rediscover when there is money involved.

I have a fond memory of taking bottles to a recycling depo with my older brother and sisters when we were young.

Thanks go to my younger brother Leo for giving me the inspiration to recycle and making me aware of the home pick-up service. I’ve deposited almost 3,000 cans in the last few weeks.

Ka’ching!

Meat, no drink, no money have I none
Yet shall we be merrry
Hey, ho, nobody home.

I lost work from two major clients in September, which had become most of my income for this year. One is focusing more on AI. The other broke up their business and sold it off.

I made my August and September income stretch until the start of December, but it is all gone now.

Now, I’m all about strict budgets and cancelling unnecessary subscriptions like streaming TV that are nice but not needed.

While I’d love to continue working from home as a copywriter, I’m also seeking a position as an employee to see me through to retirement. It doesn’t help that I have no current photographic ID, and updating it is proving challenging.

I never needed it for job hunting before.

However, in this digital age, we must prove we’re real and legitimate.

Pinch me! I’m a bot.

I would rather be a cat.

Memories…

Peanut butter makes you stutter when you utter peanut butter in the gutter. (Nonsense rhyme by the late Mr T A Wells, circa 1982.)

My son received a Tamagotchi for Hanukkah. The gimmick lasted about half an hour before he slipped the cardboard back into it and sent it to sleep indefinitely.

“It’s more of a collectors’ item,” he declared.

We celebrated. Those beeps and pips were driving me bananas.

Often, I avoid social media. I stayed away for a whole year once, during which I discovered my theme song. It resembles my experience of Substack and my social life in general:

Mr Cellophane it aughter be my name
Mr Cellophane it aughter be my name
Cause you can look right through me
See right be me
And never even know I’m there.

(From the 1975 musical Chicago, by John Kander with lyrics by Fred Ebb.)

Self-pity aside, had I been more attentive on social media, I would have learnt my Uncle Richard had passed away a day and a bit earlier than when I read about it. I didn’t like learning about his death after the fact in a Facebook message. It seemed impersonal, cold, uninclusive. I deserved it.

I had a personal revelation this year without the help of a psychologist. I prefer to be absent from relationships when I have a feeling they’re ending. It’s a protection mechanism to avoid the pain of others leaving me first. I don’t condone this behaviour, but I recognise it.

According to my oldest brother, Uncle Dick went to “doggy heaven”. I’m told that’s what he used to say about where he was going when he died.

I am forever scarred by one of his dogs, who decided to have a little chomp on my hand thirty years ago.

The news of Uncle Richard’s passing hurt more than Dad’s death in April, followed quickly by my step-brother’s death. I suspect that some of the tears shed in the private sanctity of our toilet were not all for Dick.

“AI” writers became the bain of my existence in 2024.

I was encouraged by a former client, an agency, to embrace “AI”.

I gave it a try, testing several apps. However, it took longer to produce articles as I had to do an enormous amount of editing, adding and fact-checking of regurgitated and repetitive material that was not on brand.

In the end, I reverted to my discovery and writing process and realised how easier and more enjoyable it was for me to write emotive and on-brand articles from scratch without plagiarism, repetitiveness, fluff and unsubstantiated information.

I thought “AI” was created to find solutions faster than humans and not make life a living hell.

The advent of “AI” reminds me a little of Fordism from the 1930s, where workers were treated like machines on the assembly line.

Except now, human workers are all replaceable because “AI” can do our jobs faster.

I write “AI” in inverted commas because I’m sceptical of calling it AI when it’s just some complex code doing what someone (in IT) tells it to do rather than a computer that thinks for itself.

The world needs a broader discussion about “AI” and where we see it fitting into society.

Do we need faster when it compromises quality and takes away our purpose?

Sure, I see the merits in needing a computer that can do calculations unbelievably faster than a human. Yet, when it comes to the creative sector, I see it as a fork in the road that needs a huge detour sign around it.

Why?

People need to have a purpose and they need to be creative. If you take those aspects away and give the role to machines, then you also remove human innovation, inspiration, progress and hope.

In short, it mutes our capacity to grow.

More recently, a Doctor increased the dosage of one of my medications due to a supply shortage from the manufacturer. Now, I have to cut my tablets in half every second night. And a half tablet is still higher than the original dose.

Some days, the tablets split in half perfectly, while others crumble and divide into three or more pieces.

It’s a hit-and-miss experience. A bit like life.

It is 5:50 AM. The sky is a light shade of blue. Several ominous low hanging grey clouds wander past my window vista.

I’m dreaming of cooler days and rain.

A howl pierces the silence of the house. There goes the old cat, Tabitha, meowing for attention. I swear she has it in for me and always knows when I’m preparing to sleep.

“Hello? Hello? Are you there?” I can hear the words echoed in her cries.

She will be 20 next year.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

(Read the full and original rendition of Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns.)

May 2025 shine and fill your cup to the brim where it spill’th o’er with an abundance of new, shared and heartfelt memories.

Peace out, my lovelies.

-Tina