Chapters of 2024 || hobbies, travel, social life, and more

2024 was a year of making every day count.

Although I had goals going into 2024, they weren't huge projects or milestones to be reached. I tried to form habits and routines that I'd be happy with and would add to something. I took care of my health, spent lots of time with my favourite people, and kept up my hobbies.

In early 2024, I mentioned that I wanted to include more memories in my blog posts. Keeping up with that idea, this post will be slightly different from the chapters of my previous years. Grab a cup of your favourite drink and join me in reminiscing 2024 ☕️

reading

My goal was to read 100 books and I surpassed it by reading 122. 100 is a number that I know I can reach so it's my default goal. I didn't keep a hard goal because I didn't want reading to be stressful in any way. It's a leisurely hobby and I'm happiest reading whatever, whenever.

I started the year on a great note by reading 15 books in January, mostly due to Storygraph's read-one-page-a-day challenge. Some days, I read only one page. But most days, that one page turned into several and contributed to many books read.

As you can see in the graph above, my reading constantly peaked and valleyed. I didn't have a consistent reading pace. How much I read was determined by my life schedule. I don't care much about the quantity though, I'm glad that I kept reading throughout everything and read great books.

Most of my reads were 300-499 pages with 5 books being above 500 pages. I actually read more big books but few of them were around 480 pages so they don't show up in the "big books" category. I wanted to read more big books and couldn't follow through, mainly because of the ups and downs in my reading. But it's alright! The chunky books I read were good.

I read 5 non-fiction books in the year. I'm not super happy with this number but again, I don't care much about it. 4/5 of those non-fiction books were amazing and 2 made it to my best books of 2024 list.

Coming to formats, I read mostly ebooks as usual. 59% of my reads were digital, 35% were print, and 6% were audiobooks. I wanted to read more physical books in 2024 and followed through by reading 43 which is a bit more than my count of 34 in 2023.

A big chunk of my books were romance again. It's not easy to read more of other genres because romance is my comfort genre and I can always count on romance books to make me happy. They're also much easier and faster to read. I can read 5 romance books in the time it takes me to read an average contemporary book.

Here are some quick reading facts:

• Longest book: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (992 pages)
• Shortest book: Worst Wingman Ever by Abby Jimenez (61 pages)
• Average book length: 357 pages
• Did not finish 11 books.

Although I quit books fairly often when I disliked them, some books became disappointments later on. My most disappointing reads were Cleopatra & Frankenstein, Till There Was You, and The Book of Everlasting Things.

After 9 years of using Goodreads, I switched to using Storygraph in 2024 and liked it. Although I miss the social element in Goodreads where I could see what my friends were reading, Storygraph is simple and there are no distractions. I opened the app/website only to update my reading and quickly exited to get back to reading.

I really like that if I choose the right edition, it creates the format stats for me and it calculates a bunch of other things as well. The January challenge of read-a-page-a-day was fun too. The team posted that they're doing some design changes soon, I'm excited to see them!

blogging

After 2 years of inconsistent blogging, I really wanted to blog well in 2024. At the end of 2022, I took 2 weeks off and used it to rest, recharge, and plan ahead. I started blogging in the last week of 2022 and somehow, kept it up for a year.

2024 was a consistent blogging year for me. I decided to post once every 8 days and that cadence fit my life so well that I kept it up. I didn't require any breaks and I managed to post on time throughout the year. I didn't write any filler posts either—they were all posts that I was passionate about.

I posted 52 times in 2024, far exceeding my goal of 25. My posts were 3.3k words on average. Some of my longest posts were written in 2024 and I'm so proud of them. I wrote 1,72,176 words in total! That's equivalent to an epic fantasy novel. That's wild.

Book reviews made up most of my posts. I wasn't a fan of posting full book reviews for several years but it became my jam last year. I stopped posting collections of mini reviews as monthly wrap-ups so writing full reviews for some books made sense. It forced me to think deeply about my opinions and figure out ways to elaborate them.

Around 2 posts every month were book reivews. Although book review posts don't get as much attention and that trend continued with my recent book reviews, I liked talking about books in-depth and I loved the few comments that they got.

Kdrama reviews used to my thing but I barely wrote them 2024. Earlier, they used to the post that required the most effort. It's similar to my other posts now but my mind still considers it a high effort post so I procrastinate and don't write them. The one Kdrama review I wrote (A Time Called You) is doing great, though.

I was a bit too strict about my content for a couple of years after going self-hosted which led to my burnout and lack of motivation to blog. I finally decided to loosen the reigns when I realized it.

In 2024, I wrote content that I was passionate about even if they weren't hot topics or wouldn't become popular. I included a lot of memories and added myself in the posts. This shift in mindset and content was a great decision because I didn't run out of things to write about.

If you haven't seen them yet, here are some posts that veer away from my regular content but I'm super proud of:

• My Best Book Recommendations
• A Year of Being Active
• My Life in Beverages
• BlueHost Review || Pricing, Support, & My Experience

It made me incredibly happy to see these posts receive love, especially the ones that chronicle my journey or my life. The BlueHost review took off a bit and has been linked by many other guides on BlueHost self-hosting too.

I totally stopped focusing on SEO or "popular topics" so it's not surprising that my 2024 stats are a downward graph. Whenever I look at it (not often), I feel a bit sad about it but I don't want to go back to making posts for views. I love the content that I'm writing now and the satisfaction from them is worth everything.

The main driving force behind my consistent blogging is the satisfaction that comes from finishing every blog post. As you know, I don't write short blog posts and each post is a lowkey project. I take days to write most of them and carefully think about structure, formatting, and images. Finishing and publishing a post is like sharing a part of myself because of how much effort they take.

Because of the effort that goes into each of them, I get so much satisfaction just from posting them. It doesn't matter whether the posts get many likes or comments because simply finishing them is enough for me. Scheduling/publishing a post becomes that day's highlight.

The intrinsic happiness I get from writing posts is the reason why I was able to keep up with blogging throughout the year. It's hard to stay motivated when the joy is determined by forces not in your control.

Writing posts for myself felt cathartic and gave me control over my days. Blogging gave me something to accomplish on days when I didn't feel good because of work or whatever else. It's a hobby that I'm still thankful for 9 years later.

Blogging allowed me to earn a bit of extra money too. I signed up for a year of ads with SheMedia which ran till July 2024. In the last few months, I was quite frustrated with ads and hated how they slowed my site down. Although the revenue was good—much better than what Adsense pays—it stopped being worth it. I was earning much more from my day job and it made sense to make my blog a place of peace rather than tie it with money for longer.

So, I decided not to renew my contract with SheMedia. My blog became free of Ads in August and it looks so good. I love how clean and fast it is. I like that it focuses on my content again. I don't have to space out my illustrations to accommodate for ads. I think of only my writing now.

Alongside the blog, I wrote 12 newsletters, one for every month. My schedule has been to send a newsletter on the 1st of every month at 9 AM IST for about two years now and it's still working for me. The timing made me a bit overwhelmed at one point in 2024 but I journalled and made a plan to make it work again.

In the last year, I let myself be emotional and open in the newsletters. Although I lowkey chronicle my life on the blog and share my opinions on so many things, I don't post random thoughts here. They go in my newsletter.

I didn't have a specific idea in mind for the newsletter when I started it. It has evolved over the last 3 and a half years to become what it is today—a positive and motivational mini-essay once a month. Honestly, I write what I want to tell myself based on whatever I'm feeling and it seems to resonate with others too!

My IRL friends also bring up my newsletters and say how much they love them. It makes me very happy that a random thing that I pour out from my heart makes a mark on others. If I can add even a tiny bit of positivity in your days through my words, that's enough for me.

Here are some newsletters that I loved writing:

• Consistency shmunsistency 🫠
• Accepting change is not easy
• It will happen if it's meant to be

Although I love writing and would do it even if no one read my words, this hobby is made better because of the lovely community. I received so much love in 2024 that it sometimes made me tear up. Shoutout to Clo, Mehek, Yesha, Naemi, Vaish, and Manju for taking the time to read my thoughts and commenting/replying <3

art

When I went self-hosted and started over with a .com domain, I planned out my "dream blog". For the blog aesthetic, I decided to make my own graphics because it is hard to find stock photos matching my colour theme.

I started digitally drawing around the same time and liked it so I decided to tie the two. I aimed to draw one new illustration for every blog post as its featured image. Book and Kdrama reviews were exempted because the book covers and Kdrama posters would be their featured image.

Despite the rocky journey since 2020, I actually followed through. It took me an extra three hours to finish every blog post because I had to draw something new but I managed to do it. Over time, I drew so many illustrations that I made an art gallery page to display them.

In 2024, it became slightly easier because I was posting more book reviews and hence had to draw fewer times a month. However, it still added a strain on me to draw something good every time. My standards for my illustrations were higher too.

In October, my life was just too busy and I did not have the energy to draw. So, I decided to let go of that old aim. I followed through for more than 3 years which is amazing. But, I don't have to keep to a goal that 22-year-old me made. It served me well but it's time to let go.

So, I stopped making new illustrations. That lifted a lot from my plate. I was able to write with more vigour again. I didn't need to take a break because I wasn't burning out anymore.

Ever since I stopped, I haven't drawn even once. I don't think about art at all. It's a great creative hobby but it's not my #1 passion so I don't mind pausing it for a while. I'm sure that I'll draw again when I have time and motivation for it. But it's not now and I doubt it'll happen in the next few months.

travel

I love that I'm including a travel section. Until a few years ago, I barely travelled and did not have any clue about travelling or how to handle being in a new place. My family didn't travel much when I was younger too and we mainly went to my grandparents' city on vacations.

My first trip with my friends to Goa in 2021 broke the dam and now I absolutely love travelling. I've been to quite a few places and I usually say yes whenever people ask me to join them for a trip.

I didn't travel as much as I wanted in 2024. Somehow, 6 months passed by before I realized that I didn't even plan to go anywhere. I didn't take any break from work. I was focusing a lot on my daily life—working out, health routines, blogging, etc.—and didn't leave myself time to think about vacations.

Thankfully, I took 3 vacations in the second half of the year. They were spaced out but they were really good trips and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

The first vacation of 2024 was to Ladakh. It was brilliant. I went with a few colleagues and a couple of friends from college. It was a mixed group but everyone got along well and we had so much fun. Ladakh was beautiful and I still randomly daydream about it sometimes. It was like a movie. I wrote more about the Ladakh trip here.

There are a few trips that were so good that they are "highlight" trips in my mind. The places, the group, the vibe—all of it works together to make it a great experience and memory. The Ladakh trip got added to that list. My best trips so far are the Goa trip with my college friends, the Rajasthan trip with my first team at work, and the Ladakh trip.

The second place I went to was Gokarna with my school friends. This was another idea that came about a few days before it happened. My school friends and I are never free at the same time and it was highly surprising that we were in October. So, we took the chance and went on a weekend trip together.

We mostly went to places that I've been to before but it was still a new experience because I went with a different group. Last time, I took no pictures and this time, because my school friends love to take good photos, I have a ton of great photos of myself. Girls' trips are so fun. Read more about my Gokarna trip here.

The last vacation of the year was to Nainital with a few current and ex-colleagues. The trip was a bit wonky before it began because two people had to drop out and the vibe was just not the same anymore. But it was fine during the trip and we had a great time. Our stay and the observatory in Mukhteshwar were the highlights of the trip. I spoke about the Nainital trip on length in this post.

social media

I uninstalled all social media apps from my phone in 2023. I spoke more about the reasons why and initial thoughts in my Chapters of 2023 post.

When 2024 began, I was still happily out of social media. However, I missed my friends. My friends use Snapchat a lot (so did I) and it's how we keep up with each other most of the time. We're a few too many people to talk to everyone on a daily basis. Snapchat is a lowkey way of sharing memories and updates.

A little after 6 months of not having Snapchat, I installed it again in February. Over those months of silence, many stopped sending me snaps so my app was pretty clear. I initially let only my close friends know that I'm back and tried to keep it lowkey. However, over time, my Snapchat contact list has grown again.

I like using Snapchat. I send snaps of my vacations, my coffees, and other random snippets of life. I like receiving the same from my friends. It's how we socialize daily. I don't have notifications enabled so I open whenever I'm free and check updates. It's a manageable social media app. I won't be uninstalling it again, at least not soon.

To manage the growing list of Snapchat friends, I've created different shortcuts based on how close I am with people so that it's easy for me to send snaps and not have to manually search and select. I mostly snap my friends and barely snap others. I do want to clean up my friends list again, though. Might do it sometime later in 2025.

Coming to other apps, I considered installing them after completing a year without them. When the time came around, I pushed it by a bit and kept pushing it. I just didn't want Instagram or Twitter on my phone again. I installed Instagram for a couple of days to test it out and still disliked it so I uninstalled it again.

Over the last few months, I let myself install Instagram for a day or two if I wanted to do something. If my friends tag me in stories, I want those saved in my account too so I install for a bit to reshare the story. I install the app to share blog posts sometimes. Otherwise, I don't keep the app on my phone.

I installed Instagram for a couple of days around my birthday to repost stories and got annoyed with people I'm not close to responding and messaging me. I get annoyed by the smallest things on social media because it's filled with people I'm not close to and it's not easy to restrict the account only to friends. I don't like how the app is filled with reels and videos too.

It's been a year and a half since I stopped using social media (except Snapchat) regularly and I'm still doing great.

Even though I'm not active on the platform, just the fact that my face is online for people to look at grated me suddenly so I took a day to archive all posts on my private account and few posts with me in them on the blog account. Another time, I cleaned up the people I follow on the blog account and brought it down to 25. I wanted to see posts only from people I speak to.

Recently, on my personal account, I removed hundreds of people from my followers because I don't want random people looking at my posts. However, within a day, some of them requested to follow me again. I think because Instagram suggests my account to them. I am not going to accept. I want my social media to be absolutely minimalistic.

Slowly, I'm becoming someone who hates social media. Even if I decide to use it again, I quickly hate it and uninstall it. There's simply no reason why I need social media apart from what keeps me in touch with the people I care about.

journalling

I've been quite consistent with journalling! I started writing thoughts without caring about handwriting or prettyness at the end of 2023 and it carried over to 2024.

I finished a whole book in 2024 with only words. There are no doodles or filler spaces. I've crammed every page with my thoughts and love how it looks. I like flipping through it.

I'm not following notebooks for specific dates. I'm not starting a new notebook for journalling with the new year. I've decided to just keep writing whenever I want to and switch notebooks when there's no more space in the current one.

Journalling has helped me so many times this year. It's how I work through emotions, problems, and indecision. Writing down my thoughts helps me make sense of them. Somehow, whenever I journal, I end it with a plan because I worked through everything and it becomes easy to think of what I should do.

I was trying to do morning pages for a while but it didn't work because I workout in the morning and rush to get to office in time. Instead of morning pages, I started writing multiple pages every time I journalled. More often than not, I easily write 3 pages filled with what I did, what I feel, and what I want to do next.

It would have been nice to be a bit more regular with it because there were periods when I forgot about journalling completely and it would have helped. But it's fine, how much I managed to do was good.

health

In the beginning of 2024, I was consistently running and playing badminton a few times a month. It was finally time for me to change my running shoes and while I searched for a good pair, I played more badminton.

I joined badminton games with random people and eventually joined a badminton group that plays every morning on weekdays. I played with them 3-4 times a week for several months and became friends with them. I'm the only girl in the group but there are no issues. We were a big enough group to organize and host a tournament within us too!

I played more badminton and stopped running regularly. Eventually, I was barely running. I was enjoying playing regularly so I decided to deprioritize running. As long as I was working out and staying healthy, it's good. Badminton is a really fun sport.

Badminton is a very intensive game, though. I wanted to play more but I realized that my group is quite competitive and intense so I needed to pull back a bit. It was even more tiring because I'd play and then have a full day at work. 3 games a week was the sweet spot.

I took a few long breaks in between when I got injured or thought I was burning out. I paused badminton for about a month at the end of the year because I suddenly had muscle pain in my right elbow. I wasn't able to straighten it without pain. After a month, I tried playing one day and it was going fine until 30 minutes when it suddenly hurt again. So, I'm back to being on a break from badminton.

Meanwhile, I've been going on light runs. After hitting a time goal in running, I'm not as competitive or serious about it. I do slow or light runs for fun when I have the time and energy. It's still an activity that I enjoy but I'm not pushing myself.

The first thing I did on my birthday was go for a run. I thought that it's a good way to start a new year of my life. I enjoyed that light run and I want to run more often.

I lost even more weight in 2024. The reduction is not as steep anymore now that I'm not pushing myself too much and I'm focusing on having fun and staying healthy. I'm quite happy with the weight I'm at right now and don't want to lose or gain any.

I spoke a lot more about the above in my Year of Being Active post so I'll stop here.

My skin has not been doing great. It was the same for most of the year but when winter started properly, my skin immediately flared up. Both my arms are covered with patches of eczema currently and I increased my moisturising frequency. It was been helping but my skin is healing much slower than the time it took to flare up.

For the last two months of 2024, my skin was one of my main worries. It was at the top of my mind on many days and took away my enjoyment from other things. I'm trying to not stress over it because stress can cause it to worsen. But it's not easy when I think of it every time I look at my arms.

Other than my skin, my health has been fine and I'm glad for a fairly healthy year with no big issues.

social life

My social life was great in 2024. I was an introvert for the longest time, declining most hangouts with friends, and then spent a while saying yes to everything. Finally, I think I reached a good balance of saying yes and no. I balanced social life with personal time pretty well in 2024.

I have a lot of different friends from different stages of life and they're a variety of people who like different things. Sometimes, I'm a whole different person with a different set of people. A new friend pointed out that he can't easily figure me out because of that.

Due to the varied company, I spent my time in different ways with different people. I've realized that I don't necessarily enjoy all the activities, even if I enjoy the company. Hence, in 2024, I took an extra minute to consider any invites to see if I really wanted to go. If it was terribly inconvenient, I declined because I knew that I wouldn't enjoy it as much. In some cases, I went anyway because I knew that I'd have a grand time.

The highlight of my year is the monthly meetings with Vaish, Chaitra, and Manju. We have very different schedules so we'd plan days to hangout months in advance. We were mostly able to meet only once a month and I'd spend the entire month waiting for that day. May was the only month where we did not meet and it was a sad month.

I spent a lot of time with my college friends as well. There were many impromptu hangouts and some planned activities with big groups. I'm fortunate that I'm still close to my college friends. Even if we don't meet or text often, we send snaps regularly and keep up with each other.

There's more to friendship than meetings in person. It's important to keep in contact so that friendships don't slowly die if we're unable to meet. I learnt that lesson the hard way and one of my goals for 2024 was to maintain and strengthen my friendships. I put in extra effort to text friends often, especially if I can't meet them in person.

I have a friend who used to stay a 10-minute walk away from me and she moved to another country. Years after she's lived in a different country and a wildly different timezone, I think I'm the closest to her now. On the other hand, I lost touch with a couple of friends even though they stay quite nearby. It's funny how friendships form and stay.

Discord helped as well. I used to hang out with my college friends while they gamed but I don't do that anymore because, suddenly, there are people I don't know on the voice channel and I'm unable to do anything else with them talking game things. Instead, I used Discord to hang out with Vaish, Chaitra, and Manju a bunch.

I set up regular chatty events on the Blog & Chill Discord that I created over a year ago. Although the server has a bunch of people, only a few of us are regular and we've grown quite close over months of talking. Initially, we discussed blogging and online things a lot. I used to come with questions to help the conversation.

Nowadays, every time we "meet" online, there's no need for any help to keep the conversation going. We've shared a lot about life and we end up talking about work, life updates, etc. We've lowkey become a support group for each other once a month where we each vent about things and hear reassurances. It's become a cosy online friendship that I'm really grateful for.

I set better boundaries too, especially on drinking socially and hanging out with people I don't like. Unfortunately, drinking socially is the thing to do when hanging out and I've been trying to push my friends to meet at cafes and other places instead of pubs. If the meeting is based on drinking, I don't go.

Setting those boundaries in work circles is the hardest because, for some reason, people at work love drinking socially. I went to a few of those dinners and refused to drink. The hardest part is not succumbing to comments and saying yes to alcohol. Thankfully, I managed.

One of my lowkey goals was to drink a maximum of 6 times in 2024. Even small sips counted. I'm happy to say that I had alcohol only 4 times and I'm ready to reduce it even further in 2025.

endnotes

2024 has been a good year because I spent most of it forming good habits that will help in the long run. I didn't achieve any big things in the year but that doesn't mean that the year wasn't productive. Coincidentally, I said the same thing in 2023.

Prevalent hustle culture will have us believe that unless we achieve great things every year, our time is wasted. We're constantly pushed to achieve and cross milestones. There isn't enough encouragement for slow building. That's why I love books like What You Are Looking for is in the Library, they remind us that there's more to life than hustling.

Despite living in a fast-paced city, I was able to maintain my own pace with things in 2024. I took the time to enjoy my morning coffees, listen to audiobooks while doing laundry slowly, write thousands of words on this blog, read books under warm light at night, and more.

I'm looking forward to what 2025 has in store for me and I hope to notice small joys on the way ✨

how was your 2024?

Did you go on any cool vacations? How was your social life? Did you read as much as you wanted to? What were the highlights of your year? What are you proud of? Tell me everything!