Another year closing in. Honestly, it’s been pretty uneventful from my side this year. Year 3 of the pandemic and I’ve been relatively accustomed to, well, not doing a whole lot. No real travel plans, no conferences… It’s been quiet.
Timeline
🧩 January. I got in a bit of an Advent of Code frenzy and did all the puzzles from all previous years, all the way back to 2015. It was fun, I learnt a lot, and sharpened my coding skills for this year.
🎤 January 20th. I was kindly invited by Sarah Dayan and Bryan Robinson from Algolia to appear on the Developer Experience podcast to talk about the overlap between User Experience and Developer Experience, particularly in terms of accessibility.
📦 January 31st. As a result, I open-sourced a small library called Circularray. It was a fun way for me to learn about double-ended queues (like the deque Python module) and implement them from scratch in JavaScript.
🏳️⚧️ March 15th. First time seeing my parents in person since coming out to them. It wasn’t too easy, but also didn’t go too bad, so all in all I think it’s okay.
🤧 May 22nd. I caught COVID, after 2 and a half years of avoiding it, despite 3 shots. A few bad days of fever and flu symptoms, followed by tiredness for another week. Could have been worse to be fair, but certainly not fun.
🦍 May 25th. I got laid off from Gorillas along with 350 employees in an effort to reduce costs amid the company’s inability to raise sufficient money to keep operations running.
☀️ June 13–22th. My brother and I visited our sisters in the south of France. A week full of warm weather, sun, beach and sea wind. Delightful (although I was still recovering from COVID)!
🚶♀️ June 25th. I went on what became a daily walk of 30–60 minutes. Haven’t missed a day since then!
⚡️ September 1st. I joined EVA Global as a Senior Engineering Manager.
📣 September 16th. I became one of the first Sanity Ambassadors, kickstarting their new community program after having spent months involved in the community.
🚪 September 27th. I resigned from EVA Global. It just wasn’t for me, and I didn’t feel like extending my employment any longer.
🎥 October 1st. I joined Cofenster as a VP of Engineering.
🌆 October 11–14th. I visited Hamburg for the first time to meet the Cofenster teams. I gotta say, the city center is lovely when the weather in nice.
👗 November. I did an entire month wearing only dresses or skirts, because I felt like it and because I wanted to make it more normal for me to wear that kind of outfit. It was nice, except for the cold!
🏳️🌈 November 29th. I spoke at a webinar on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the workplace.
🌱 November 15th. This day marked 4 years for me without eating meat and 3 years without fish.
💻 December. I participated in Advent of Code again this year and managed to go all the way through although I have skipped a day or two due to overwhelming complexity (for me).
👋 December 19th. I got the opportunity to meet Hidde de Vries during my short trip in the Netherlands! Lovely to finally meet in person after having crossed paths so many times online.
Some random stats
- I have walked about 750 kilometers since this summer, or about 4 kilometers a day on average.
- I wrote 19 articles this year, including 30 Frontend Tips, Hiring at Gorillas and Help Me Help You: A Guide to Asking for Help.
- I’ve grown my hair about 25 centimeters.