Yearnotes 2

Three full years of weeknotes! I’m as surprised as anyone.

Briefly: this has been the worst year of my life. After largely breezing through the worst of the actual pandemic, 2022 was the year when the extended isolation of lockdowns and remote working really hit me; my mental health, my physical health and the world in general seemed to all go to shit at roughly the same time.

I caught COVID, I lost friends and colleagues, the UK government & economy fell apart — hell, even Twitter fell apart. It’s been miserable, in a sustained and inescapable way that I’ve struggled to deal with.

But! The loss and middle-class suffering has made me more grateful for what I do have, and more determined to properly maintain it.

So I’ve been making an effort to invest in my remaining relationships and wellbeing. I’ve been pretty good about going to the gym most days; I’m getting better about seeing friends; I’m actively and intentionally taking much better care of my mental health. Life is slowly improving.

Coincidentally (?) a couple of grey hairs began appearing this year, so I suppose I had a good innings. 👴🏻

I got a lot of pleasure out of my pointless, interminable WebAssembly interpreter project. I’ve always enjoyed other people’s endurance feats and this is starting to feel like one of my own. My routine of regular streaming became a bit derailed by life getting in the way towards the end of the year but I hope I can return to the rhythm of it in January. I’ve no idea what to do with it, but I suppose I’ll continue for now since I’m still having fun.

Having a vague structure (e.g. kicking off each session by restating my purpose & goals, then doing a retro) has helped to keep it going, as has the kind participation of a few people in the Ruby community. And I’ve enjoyed getting my head around WebAssembly, which arguably I could’ve done much more quickly by reading a book or something, but I’m stupid and lazy enough that I absolutely require this absurd degree of engagement with a technology in order to learn it properly.

I started drafting a summary of the first hundred hours but haven’t properly written it yet. Although it’d be a nice record to have, the potential audience is so small that I don’t know whether it’s worth the hassle.

Technically I did somehow manage to give another conference talk this year, but without a video or a write-up it’s like it never happened. tears in { rain: }.

My favourite game this year has been — sorry! — The Last of Us Part I, which is honestly much more of an improvement upon the original than I was expecting, and has given me many hours of nostalgic fun as I endure & survive familiar old situations in shockingly new detail.

I also enjoyed the first half of Stray. I haven’t returned to play the second half because I’ve never been in the mood to stream it. (See, this is how streaming a game poisons your mind. I know I’m allowed to just play it for myself!)

I did like Horizon Forbidden West, even though — in a similar display of self-defeating wrongthink — I put off the final mission for so long that I got bored of side quests and drifted away without finishing it. I hope next year’s DLC will pull me back in.

I was worried that fomo might trick me into buying God of War Ragnarök even though I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it, but it didn’t, so I didn’t, so I’ll take that win.

Cracking The Cryptic has been a real mental health lifeline this year. It’s also been helpful to watch Claire Saffitz continue her patient, exasperated cooking in her new kitchen.

While I’m glad I left my previous job, it’s created uncertainty about the future. I’m keeping busy with bits of freelance work for now, but at some stage I need to decide whether I’m going to look for another full-time job or commit myself to proper consulting.

Ideally I’d like real coworkers in a real office but maybe I’m being overly optimistic about how many non-toxic, non-remote, non-cryptocurrency tech jobs there are in London at the moment.

I probably need some coffees and chats in the new year.

Anyway, yeah, I’m glad to have kept weeknotes going for another year without breaking the streak. It’s increasingly unclear what the purpose is, but again, endurance has intrinsic value.

We made it. I hope we all have a better 2023. See you then. 🥂