I welcomed in 2023 with a board game (Ticket to Ride, got my ass served to me wholesale by my fiancée) and a double dram of The Lake's Distillery Whisky Maker's Reserve #5, which I nursed lovingly for several hours. It was quite the quiet affair.
I enjoyed observing the Winter Solstice this year. I lit a candle, observed solar noon and thought "this is as dark as it gets". Referring to the season (or year) - rather than the day.
We made it through another winter, and we did it with family (chosen and given), food, and some damn fine drinks. The Snowdrops are up, and the bravest daffodils are thinking about it.
Unlike last year, I met December 2022 on its own terms. I did not try to make it a restful, quiet time to mull over what the whole of 2022 was, or what 2023 will be. Instead, I leaned into it being the tour of social obligations.
I think I enjoyed this festive period a lot more than last year's. I know there's a lot more joy in acceptance than resistance, but knowing isn't knowing.
I'll find that restful, peaceful time - but it'll probably be when others are more distracted by the hubbub of normal routine.
Even though I said in my last Vibe Check that I could "scream from shirt making", I made another shirt. This one's publicly wearable! Bringing my hit rate on shirts from 50% to 66%.
It's a a delightful shirt and in black-and-white hand-woven cotton, sourced from the lovely folk at Offset Warehouse. I scraped it into 2022 with hours to spare, and if I can be so bold, I think it looks fantastic. It's thick enough and long enough to make me look like a fine visual artist. If you get a moment, do look at the outfits that Pablo Picasso wore - if I get to be old in the Mediterranean sun, I'll take (visual, not lifestyle) inspiration from him.
Next up is trousers. I tried to make some trousers early in 2022, but the results were bad. I'm not wearing any of them in public. I reckon I've learned enough about garment construction (if not fitting) in the last year that my next attempt(s) should yield something halfway decent. I've picked up some grey/tan wool, and some navy twill - both of which I really love. So I'm excited to have some me-made, semi-formal trousers to put into rotation.
My thoughts at work have been largely turned to how bigger and wider (more people, more specialities) can work collaboratively but separately. With more of us building more things, and with shifting global economical outlooks (i.e. the oncoming recession) it's harder than you'd think to get a clear idea of what's definitely important, versus what could be important.
It's also been fantastic to be more hands-on-the-clay with some software engineering. The last month saw me taking a real look at a performance bottleneck in our system, getting a proof-of-concept solution in, running a few benchmarking experiments, and figuring out what we were right about, wrong about, and what we didn't even consider.
I spend a lot of time telling people to follow a hunch by doing something (anything) and then decide if you should carry on, shift, or eject. This was a fine example of how doing something small with the intention of learning can teach you a lot more about the actual problems and solutions you're working with. Everything else is just best guesses.
I've some thoughts about long-running 2023 projects (one of which is "plan and finance 50% of a wedding"). I love the feeling of intentionally starting a project.
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