2023 Highlights
One more for the road
Sidebar
I started writing these “year in review” posts back in 2014 while working at Medium itself. I’d blogged on and off since the late 90s, but always with some ambivalence. There’s an uncomfortable duality of putting thoughts out on the web: are you talking to yourself in a quiet wilderness or shouting in the middle of a crowded room. For me, Medium helped solve this.
Publishing here felt less intimidating. Posts seemed to naturally reach the right audience, without the need for aggressive promotion. This ranged from a few hundred views on personal updates to tens of thousands for engineering thought leadership pieces. Having both types of content in one place worked and as a result, publishing on Medium didn’t feel as high-stakes.
I’m glad Medium still exists, but it doesn’t feel like the right place for this type of post anymore. But at the same time I don’t want to break with the tradition while figuring out a last minute alternative.
So here’s another (and maybe the last) year in review.
As before, this is a rose tinted reflection on the year, avoiding work discussion as much as possible. It’s likely only moderately interesting if you are close friends or family.
At the end of 2022, we arrived back in the US on New Years Eve after a challenging trip to England. Skye had had a bad ear infection and was needing round the clock medication to keep her pain and temperature down. We decided to drive straight up to the mountains and spent a few days recuperating amid the trees.
We had a number of great snow days in 2023. We went sledding and tubing with the girls. I had a solo powder day at Bear Valley, and a blue-bird day with Xiao.
Tessa and I tried to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary with a day trip to the ski slopes, but 10 miles out the road was closed. Instead we spent the afternoon clearing 6ft of snow off the deck.
I flew to Texas twice for work, once to Austin and once to San Antonio. It was my first time in the lone star state. I enjoyed running by the rivers and got to experience an epic thunderstorm.
In March we spent a week in Hawaii. The first half was at an idyllic Airbnb on a coffee plantation in Captain Cook. We then relocated to the Fairmont-Orchid so I could attend The Lobby Conference.
Back in 2009 we bought a loft in SoMa. In many ways it was my dream home, the bare concrete and large windows throw backs to sitcoms, MTV, and The Real World in the 90s, while growing up a world away in England.
Despite having 1.5 bedrooms, and only one interior door, I was convinced we could raise our two daughters in it. But while working from home during spring break it became abundantly clear we needed a change.
We were first looking in the Dogpatch and Potrero, but ended off finding a great place in the Inner Mission, and we moved in May.
In June we went on our first camping trip with Lyra’s school. It was 2 nights in Samuel P Taylor State Park and the kids loved it, despite lots of bumps and scrapes.
Tessa and I were on the hook for dinner on the 2nd night and cooked 24 pizzas.
After the success of the school trip, we decided to have a go at a camping road trip. In August, we traveled up the Eastern Sierras into the Cascades and then over to Seaside, Oregon. We used HipCamp and found some really cool spots. Our favorite was a working ranch on the edge of reservation land in Northern California.
We saw some of Tessa’s family in Seaside, then on the way back stopped in Portland to see friends.
Thanksgiving was in Seattle. We did more touristy stuff than usual, visiting the Pacific Science Center and the Burke Museum, both of which were great.
In December we made a somewhat last minute decision to fly to Vegas to see U2 for my birthday. While we’ve taken solo flights, it was the first time both Tessa and I had flown away from the girls at the same time.
It was a pretty manic 24 hour trip, but I found the Sphere mesmerizing and the U2 show was amazing.
Looking back at my photos of the year, I’m realizing why I feel so exhausted. As well as the big trips, there are a whole host of birthday parties, play dates, weekend adventures, school events, performances, and celebrations. I guess it’s good to be busy, but I’m hoping for some more peace in 2024.
One of my non-work projects this year was building a fire pit. It was a project of many steps, requiring lots of googling and numerous trips to the hardware store. It was also a very good functional workout — funnily whoop recognized the dirt moving work as ice hockey…
I set myself a 450 mile running goal again this year. This is a modest distance, which some people in my Strava feed do in little more than a month. But it was still a struggle for me.
Not least because of work and family commitments, but also because of general fitness, injuries, and sickness (including a December bought with COVID — unrelated to vegas.)
This year I read/listened to 16 books, often parallel tracking epic fantasy with shorter non-fiction books.
In non-fiction I read, Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn, American Gun by Cameron McWhirter, How the Future Works by Brian Elliot, The Grid by Gretchen Bakke, and Hothouse Earth by Bill McGuire.
I read a lot of Tad Williams this year, really loving the Last King of Osten Ard series: Stone of Farewell, The Dragonbone Chair, Brothers of the Wind, Into the Narrowdark. I also read Happy Hour in Hell, which was … less good.
In other fiction, I read The Plague by Albert Camus, One Second After by Willian Forstchen, The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien, The Every by Dave Eggers, The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson, and listened to The Sandman: Act II.
We ended the year where we started, up in the mountains. And now back to SF to get 2024 started. Here we go.
We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.
We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.
— Sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.
