End-of-year special 2024!
At the end of 2022 and 2023, I wrote special editions of the liftingstones.org newsletter to look back over the year and announce plans for the year ahead. I'm still shocked we're at the end of 2024, and I wasn't sure whether to do a retrospective (I didn't quite do as much as I planned), but these special editions are now an annual tradition.
So here it is: the liftingstones.org year in review 2024. Feel free to jump to whichever section interests you most:
- Overview
- 2024's articles
- 2024 goals retrospective
- Publish fewer articles
- Stonelifting projects
- Stonelifting travels
- Final thoughts on 2024
- Goals for 2025
- Thank you!
Overview
Like a broken record I've been repeating myself with the same introductory line for the past few years: this year has been the biggest year yet for liftingstones.org. And I couldn't be happier or more grateful! More people than ever have received newsletters, read articles, and found stones on the map.
Having said that, I don't think the project's growth has that much to do with what I've done this year so much as the growth in stonelifting as a whole. It's clear that stonelifting continues to gain popularity, so the question is how far will it go? Only time will tell.
While the project is going strong, 2024's theme ended up being time, and my distinct lack of it. Let's jump in.
2024's articles
With the exception of 2021 (when I took a break from the project), 2024 has actually been the year where I've published the fewest articles on the site – four. For some context, I published 10 articles in 2023 and 12 in 2022, so it's a pretty big drop compared to previous years.
Publishing fewer articles was actually part of the plan for 2024 (more on that later). And of the four, only one was written exclusively by me. The other three were guest articles by some incredible guest writers sharing their own research and stories. Let's recap!
North Rona: Shipwrecked landed in February thanks to Jacob Hetherington. Jacob tells the story of Alexander MacLeod who – after crash landing on the tiny remote island of Rona in the far north of Scotland – left a lump of stone on top of another as an act of remembrance.
It's a wonderfully well-researched story that digs into the history of Rona and the potential of Alexander MacLeod's stone still existing. Jacob's final tease at there being more stonelifting stories on Rona has me excited to read more.
Then in May, Jamie Gorrian shared his third guest article on liftingstones.org telling his story of getting more women involved in stonelifting through stonelifting tours and his McGregor Stonelifting Games competitions. Jamie's initiative and sheer drive to make change shines through here.
September saw my story of a pair of stones in the Japanese alps – an article I was battling with for over a year. After writing about my experience at The Gathering in August, I finally found the direction I wanted to take. So I started fresh with a blank slate and wrote about my trip to a pair of stones that transport you back a couple hundred years when you lift them.
Finally, back in October, Calum Stott told his interconnected story of the Lonton Egg and the Teesdale Feat Stone, showing the power of on-the-ground research and timing. The discovery of a historic English challenge stone may well pave the way forward for more historic stone discoveries in England.
I want to give another massive thanks to all the guest authors who shared their stories this year: Jacob Hetherington, Jamie Gorrian, and Calum Stott. As much as I love writing, I love sharing a platform with others in the community to spread stonelifting culture around the world even more.
2024 goals retrospective
In last year's retrospective, I shared three goals for 2024 – let's check up on them and see how we did.
Publish fewer articles
This one was simple: publish a maximum of six articles in 2024. My rationale here was that by reducing the total number of articles I publish, I would be able to spend more time researching, writing, and editing to make each one even better.
Like I mentioned, this year saw four new articles on the main site – so that's a pass! But it doesn't feel like a satisfying pass.
One other benefit of reducing the number of articles – and one of the reasons I set this goal – was that it should free up additional time for me to work on things other than writing. While I did work on other stuff, I don't have much to show for the bigger projects I started. And priorities outside of liftingstones.org (mostly the day job) sapped more time than ever, so even though I wanted to publish six articles, I just didn't have the time.
Although there were only four articles on the main site, the newsletter still continued at roughly the same cadence. Counting this letter, we've hit a total of nine in 2024!
Stonelifting projects
Outside of research and writing, I work on other stuff – like improving the site, maintaining the map, building tools, and a bunch more. So what did I get up to?
letters.liftingstones.org
The first liftingstones.org project this year was to update this newsletter. I've talked about it a few times, so I won't recap it all again (you can read more why I changed platforms here), but the main news is that these newsletters are no longer strictly email-only.
The best way to experience newsletters is still via email (there are occasionally some email-exclusive parts of these letters), but the Letters site contains an archive of all past newsletters for people to read and catch up on in case they missed anything. Manually archiving the old newsletters was tedious but well worth the time it took now that it's done.
All round, the newsletter experience is so much nicer than before, and I'm looking forward to more people than ever enjoying them! If you have any suggestions or ideas for the newsletter, feel free to reach out and let me know!
Fundraising for The Gathering 2024
Last year, I created the Dinnie Stones enamel pin which continues to sell well and help fund the liftingstones.org project (site hosting and the newsletter).
This year I wanted to use sales of the pins to contribute to the public Donald Dinnie Day fundraiser. So after an enthusiastic thumbs-up from Stevie Shanks, I worked on a little campaign.
I thought sharing some facts around the Dinnie Stones on Instagram would help get some eyes on the campaign. In order to find some facts, I had to revamp the way I manage and maintain the Dinnie Stones' lifter data I keep (which I primarily use to update the current total number of lifters in the Dinnie Stones article).
In short, I spent a few days writing some software to help manage the data (the way I collect it, format it, store it, and work with it). So now, instead of manually updating the data, it's now a mostly automated system that results in some nice structured data to work with.
A huge benefit is that we can now query the lifter data and generate some cool stats, like 'how many people lifted the Dinnie Stones at the same age Donald Dinnie first achieved the feat?' It turns out just 10 people lifted the stones at 23 years of age or younger (as of June 21st 2024). And so one of the Instagram posts was dedicated to highlighting all those younger lifters.
One of the other posts was a chart displaying the number of Dinnie Stones lifters per year. It's still crazy to see that spike in lifters after Rogue's Stoneland documentary was released.
Another bit of information I wanted to share was on the Dinnie Stones' rings and why they're different, which got great feedback.
By the end of the campaign, sales from the pins raised £150 towards The Gathering. If you bought a pin during the campaign, I want to thank you again wholeheartedly. I'm incredibly proud we managed to raise almost 10% of the fund's goal.
Unless I've forgotten something, that was all of 2024's projects. I'm pretty happy looking back at them – I didn't really see them as projects at the time, but they were. And I'm glad I completed them.
Stonelifting travels
In the last review, I mentioned having booked a trip. That was a trip to Potarch for The Gathering, where I captured as much as I could of the experience before writing about it in a dedicated letter. I loved every second of it (it was my first time at The Gathering in Potarch), and I'd love to go back – though I have no plans to attend in 2025 yet.
While I managed to visit Potarch this year, the other trip I hinted at in last year's review didn't happen. Again, time constraints and other priorities meant I couldn't schedule anything, sadly.
Regardless, the goal of travelling for stonelifting gets its passing grade too.
Final thoughts on 2024
While it has been frustrating dealing with less time to work on liftingstones.org, and disappointing that some projects are yet to see the light of day, I'm content with 2024 - I published articles that people enjoyed, helped fund-raise for The Gathering, and finally managed to get to Potarch to see it all in person.
It's difficult not to compare what feels like a 'down' year to the year before (especially when 2023 was a high point), but in isolation 2024 was a success. Instead of dwelling too much on the past, I'm looking forward – liftingstones.org isn't going anywhere. Barring tragedy, I'll be working on liftingstones.org for many years to come.
Goals for 2025
On to the hard part. What's next?
When I really started thinking about my goals for liftingstones.org in 2025 (after first sitting down to write this letter in early December), I was stumped. I didn't know what I wanted to do. Even after a couple of weeks, I still wasn't sure.
There's a to-do list of things I want to work on. And it is massive. There are hundreds of items – some are small, while others are moonshot projects themselves. It would be easy to announce some ambitious plans, but 2025 looks likely to be as time-constrained as this year, so I have to be realistic (as boring as that sounds).
After some procrastination, I've decided a successful 2025 looks pretty similar to 2024. Here's the plan: publish a few articles, complete a small project, and go on a trip for stonelifting. Anything beyond that will be a massive bonus! Maybe circumstances will change and I'll exceed my own expectations.
Thank you!
As always, I want to thank you for reading.
Whenever I've heard someone say something like 'it's all because of you (the audience) that we do this', it always felt performative and a bit cliché to me. Now I'm on the other side of it, I can tell you it's true. Without you reading, enjoying, and engaging with this project, it wouldn't be where it is today. Like I said at the top of the letter, I couldn't be more grateful! And I hope you'll continue joining me on this journey!
If you have any suggestions or feedback for any part of the project (articles, newsletter, the site itself, etc.), or if there's anything you'd like to see, please reach out! I reply to all email I receive (with the exception of spam, of course).
Finally, I hope you have a Happy New Year!
Dave