Year 2024: An Emotional Roller-Coaster

Is it because of my recency bias that I've thought "this is the best year of my life so far" every year since 2020?

I really did think so in 21, 22, 23, and this year.

Of course, there's no technology available to me that enables me to accurately measure the level of my well-being in 2019, 2020, and all other years that followed, to know whether this year actually has been the best ever for me.

But now, at this very moment when I say “this year feels like the best one yet,” my 2024 is, really, actually, truly one of the best – just like my life is one that truly shouldn’t have been started when I think “my life is very bad, in fact so bad that it shouldn’t have been started, even considering the well-being of other consciousnesses than me.”

So I find Benatarian arguments like “all lives are bad,” “lives are actually worse than the livers of the lives think,” not convincing at all.

Who experiences that “actual” badness of their life?

No one!

Still, I find it difficult to simply call this year a great one for me.

Not every day this year has been heavenly.

I experienced a lot of pain on many occasions.

On what I’d like to think are even more occasions, I felt so incredibly privileged and lucky.

There were moments when I experienced such pleasure and intense pain at the same time.

This may be recency bias again, but I don’t think there’s been a year where I, as this consciousness on this human body, have ever existed so "vividly" as 2024 – or, in plain words, I’ve never experienced this much of an emotional roller-coaster before this year.

Nah, that’s not true.

2021 surely can’t be beaten in that sense.

Now that I've given it a thought, I’m reluctant to call 2024 the best year of my life.

But this year certainly contained some memories that I would cherish for the rest of my life.

Just like a small stain can ruin a whole big sheet, I could, if asked, name one single event that was good enough to potentially make 2024 the best year of my life.

In this blog post, we’ll take a look back at some highlights of 2024, where I, as this consciousness on this human body, existed potentially as vividly as in 2021, if not more.

STREET OUTREACH

As the Street Outreach Team at Antinatalism Japan, we had 10 outreach events this year.

We wanted to do 12 (1 per month), but we had to cancel 2.

In terms of locations, we did 6 in Ikebukuro, 3 in Shibuya, and 1 in Harajuku, so that’s not very well balanced.

I’d like to add some new locations for outreach events to these three next year.

At the first outreach event of the year, which we had in Shibuya, a very aggressive pro-natalist verbally attacked us for minutes and emotionally damaged us.

The guy refused to process whatever we said to him, and kept reacting to it only with emotions, so what felt like 4 minutes or so, where he kept attacking us, was really just a waste of time and energy for us.

What he was doing is, essentially, bringing a gun to a chess match to force his opponent to resign, and then declare that he is the winner of that match.

The English signs, which we made following the lesson we learned last year, made their debut at the 2nd outreach event of this year.

It seemed like a very effective thing to do, given that we’d had no outreach events without seeming foreign tourists, in fact many, seeing our signs.

Multiple English speakers have come to talk to us after seeing our English signs, so I think they have proven definitely worth making.

I’m one of the 3 usual members of Street Outreach Team who attend almost every outreach event, and we sometimes have some other members or outsiders joining us, so our outreach effort often involves 3-4 people.

Hopefully, new locations will help our message reach a wider variety of people next year!

OTHER ACTIVITIES WITH ANJ

This year saw 13 new members joining ANJ.

33 people, including 10 joining within 4 days of ANJ’s launch, joined us in the first year, 2021, followed by 7 in 2022 and 12 in 2023, so it’s not too bad.

I did hope for a few more, considering the article published in November based on an interview with me, to be honest.

I’ve addressed the interview in another blog post, where I also talked about the completion of translation and proofreading of the Japanese version of An Antinatalist Handbook, which is potentially the most important event of the year.

There’s nothing more to say here about how significant it was to me, than what is already said in that blog post.

I personally am very delighted with the start of members’ columns on our website.

Mr. Hazama and I are the only contributors now, so I hope to see the 3rd next year.

NEW WEBSITE & UPDATED VISUAL IDENTITY

My logo itself is unchanged, but I changed the background color from plain teal to the gradient of teal (339999) and navy blue (19194d).

In the opinion of me at the time, this made me “look 500 times better than before on the internet,” and I agree with him.

Completing the work to make the website ready to be made public based on this updated identity, I think, made the existence of me ethically more valuable by encouraging my future self to write and publish blog posts on painism and antinatalism.

FINDING GREAT FILMS & TV SERIES

This year, I had my first chance to watch Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

I know, it’s super late, but better than never, right?

I’m slightly jealous of those who watched these shows when they were first aired, as I’m sure they shared an amazing experience with those around them.

I had a great time alone nonetheless, and I’m grateful for that.

I can confidently assert that Oppenheimer is the very best film that I have ever watched in my life.

Nolan really does extract the potential of the medium of film so very well.

He’s like Fernando Alonso, to use a motor-racing analogy.

LEAVING THE MOD TEAM OF R/ANTINATALISM

Something that played a big part in maintaining a decent level of my well-being this year is my departure from the mod team of r/antinatalism in May.

I would never say that every single day I spent as part of that mod team was a living hell – on the contrary, I met amazing people and became good friends (and I don’t use the word "friend" lightly) with them, and I loved it.

But it’s also true that I experienced pain too severe for the joy of being part of the mod team to comfortably outweigh.

Back in May, the pain was definitely beginning to outweigh the pleasure.

Furthermore, the new rules that we introduced gave me realistic hope that the mod team would be able to lead the subreddit on a decent course without my input.

So I could finally allow myself to leave the environment that caused me a lot of benefit and a lot, and a bit more, of harm.

2 VISITS TO HAKONE TURNPIKE

At one point of the year, I really, really wanted to drive a convertible car, preferably with a manual gearbox.

So I rented an S660 to go to Hakone Turnpike.

Ever since becoming a fan of racing and cars, I’ve always known the name of Hakone Turnpike but never visited it, so it was so delightful to finally go there with such a wonderful car.

The 2nd time I went there was so weird and random that I actually think it was one of the very best days of the year, along with my trip to Okayama, which I will talk about later.

I left the house, thinking I’d have a fun lunch with my high school friend, and 4 hours later, I was in a Suzuki Hustler with him, heading towards Hakone!

A BEAUTIFUL F1 SEASON: PIASTRI’S FIRST WINS

This season of Formula 1 had many memorable races, including the British GP, where McLaren’s strategy screwed over Oscar, the Hungarian GP, where he won his first Grand Prix under quite disgusting circumstances, and the Azerbaijan GP, where he performed like a multi-time world champion.

We all thought, didn’t we, that Max would repeat 2023 by winning every race and securing the championship with 7 races left or something, but no, it was the most chaotic and exciting season in the last 10 years! (excluding 2021, of course... but that was an entirely different kind of "exciting")

After Bahrain, no one would have believed that 7 different drivers out of 24 would win races this year.

Having 24 drivers, not 20, already means quite an extraordinary season.

Red Bull is no longer the fastest.

They are in a position where they will (and did) lose tons of points to McLaren, Ferrari, and sometimes Mercedes, if they fail to extract every ounce of potential they have.

2025 is the final season with this set of technical regulations… I can’t wait!

TRIP TO OKAYAMA: FALLING IN LOVE WITH VIVALDI’S MUSIC

I’ve wanted to visit Fairywood Glass Museum for quite some time, and I found an opportunity in August to make it happen, as well as enjoying my first trip on the Sunrise Izumo/Seto, an overnight sleeper train.

Unfortunately the Sunrise was cancelled, so I had to use the Shinkansen to go to Shizuoka on the first night of day 0, and then stay there till the next morning.

I got on the first Shinkansen of the day to get to Okayama.

That meant a 2-hour delay on day 1, making it unrealistic to get on a ferry to go to the Chichu Art Museum on Naoshima Island as originally planned.

It didn’t really ruin the day, because it allowed me to spend time in the sunset hours at Yoshima Parking Area, which I found rather nice when I visited it on my way to Kaii Higashiyama Setouchi Museum.

The Honda Fit (known as the Jazz outside of Japan) that I rented parked at Yoshima PA

I particularly loved “残照” at the museum.

I would have loved to add a postcard of it to my collection, but for some reason, they didn’t sell it there.

What a shame.

After some very pleasant hours at Yoshima PA, I drove to Kaikatsu Club Okayama Kurashiki, where I would stay for the night and the next.

On day 2, I visited the main dish of this trip, the Fairywood Glass Museum, in the morning.

It’s not a big museum at all, but there’s a lot of artworks made of Uranium glass that glow green under UV light, which I found very delightful.

Something not very common among other glass museums is what they call “glass workshop tour space,” from which I enjoyed watching people crafting glasswares.

2 songs that hugely entertained me on the way to Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, and all the way through this trip, were the 3rd movement of “Summer” and the 1st of “Winter” from Vivaldi’s violin concerto.

After this trip, I added these to my “daily essentials” playlist, on which there were only 2 other tracks before.

I must admit that I made a mistake of scheduling a 3-hour drive from Okayama to Hiroshima, on what is effectively the 3rd day of a trip with so much driving.

My need for breaks on the way meant that I could only spend 50 minutes at the museum in Hiroshima, despite my original plan saying 1.5 hours.

I should plan a trip sometime in the future, just in Hiroshima without having to drive such long ways.

The Ohara Museum of Art, which I visited on day 3, was unexpectedly good.

“春の光” by Torajiro Kojima was my favorite artwork there, and I wanted a postcard of it just like “残照” by Higashiyama, but of course, given my luck, they didn’t have it.

Such a shame.

After returning the Honda Fit, I spent the rest of the day at Kaikatsu Club near Okayama station.

I had a terrible time going home!

With Shinkansens being cancelled left, right and center, it took me whopping 12 hours to go home (including a meal at T’s Tantan Tokyo Station, which was the only nice time), by getting on a Shinkansen, then a Thunderbird, and then another Shinkansen, all of which terribly crowded, going all the way through Kanazawa and Toyama, where I had a wonderful trip last year (I saw the Toyama Glass Art Museum from the train window!).

VISITING ART EXHIBITIONS

Including the trip I just talked about, I visited 13 art museums, or art exhibitions, in total this year, most of the time alone but only on 2 occasions with someone else.

Tokyo Fuji Art Museum: 源氏物語 THE TALE OF GENJI ─「源氏文化」の拡がり　絵画、工芸から現代アートまで─
Azabudai Hills Gallery: Calder: Un effet du Japonais
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo: Trio: Modern Art Collections from Paris, Tokyo and Osaka
Kaii Higashiyama Setouchi Museum of Art
Fairywood Glass Museum
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
Ohara Museum of Art
Yamatane Museum of Art: Special 25th Memorial Exhibition: Higashiyama Kaii and Summer in Japan
Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi Main Store: The 71st Japanese Traditional Crafts Exhibition
Seikado Bunko Art Museum: Elegance of Heian Literature: The National Treasure The Tale of Genji Screens and the Evolution of Court Esthetics
Yoshizawa Memorial Museum of Art, Sano: 源氏物語とみやび
川風のガーデン: River / Blue 山口幸士
旧近衛師団司令部庁舎: Mastering the Art: Exploring the Cultural Messages Connoted in japanese Works

This list turned out to be longer than I expected!

I guess this is what happens when we have 365 days a year.

I won’t set any goals for the next year as to how many exhibitions to visit, because it’s not like the more I visit the better person I become or anything.

I’ll just keep doing what I did this year, mainly visiting exhibitions that feature Akane Yamamoto’s works, and a few more others perhaps.