Feb 4, 2024 ⋅ 12 min read

Thoughts about 2023

It’s February 4th, 2024, and it took me multiple weeks to write this post... 🙈 In 2023, I didn’t share my thoughts on 2022 because I was sick and felt extremly tired at the end of the year. A few months later, I regretted not taking the time to reflect. At the end of 2023, I was sick again (like every 5th person in Germany), and I felt unmotivated for various reasons. But a bit delayed, I’ll share my thoughts about 2023 now!

In 2023...

• I traveled through six countries in Europe by train and bus, in total around 8.000 km. In comparison to that, I took one flight to Stockholm and back (~3.000 km) and one from Bilbao to Munich (~1.600 km) after Flixbus decided to leave without me in the middle of the night in Spain. 🚆
• I climbed 180 routes which sums up to around 2 km in height and 42 hours in total. I also did my first multi-pitch route together with my sister. 🧗
• I gave my very first conference talk with 500 people in the audience and the talk was live streamed and recorded. 🎤
• I let my hair grow again. It’s now shoulder length. 💇‍♀️

Travelling by train

Looking through my photographs, I realized I traveled a lot by train and bus, and I both loved it and was challenged by it.

I traveled to various places in Europe, including:

• April: Lyon, France – by train and night bus to MiXiT conference for my first keynote talk 🇫🇷
• May: Stockholm, Sweden – by plane for Spotify Intro Days 🇸🇪
• September: Barcelona & Logroño & Bilbao, Spain – by train, bus and night bus plane for NSSpain conference 🇪🇸
• October: Linz, Austria – by train for a Yoga retreat 🇦🇹
• December: Amsterdam, Netherlands – by train for vacation 🇳🇱

I loved how traveling by train or bus made me more aware of the distance, forcing me to slow down. It’s better for the environment and allows me to enjoy the changing landscape through the window.

One downside of train travel is the high cost of tickets. I can’t understand why train travel is more expensive than flights. It should be the other way around for many reasons...

Most of the time, I traveled alone. I learned a lot about my boundaries, how much stress, changes in plans and uncertainty I can bare and which decisions I want to take and which I don’t. Being a picky eater, navigating foreign menus without understanding the language was a challenge. But I wasn’t starving during my trips, it just took me a lot of energy, especially since I get easily "hangry". 🤣

At the end of my trip to Spain, I found myself stranded in the middle of the night at a bus station because Flixbus left ealier than planned without notifying me. So I was not speaking the language, unfamiliar with the culture, and uncertain about whether it’s safe as a woman alone at night. I just wanted to be finally home again. I was so glad I could call my partner and he would patiently listen to me both crying and complaining, and in the end organize a hotel and an alternative way back home.

In conclusion, most of the times I really enjoyed long-distance travel in Europe by train and bus and will definitely do it again! Looking forward what 2024 adds to the list of train travels (like the Santa Claus Express in Finland soon 👀).

Work work work

I feel like 2023 was the year in which I learned the most about accessibility in different contexts! The more I learned about best practices and strategies, the more I felt like I don’t know much at all. 😄

The year started with having the possibility to embed in the accessibility team at Spotify! Wow! It was an honor to work with such talented and passionate people. I was very excited about this opportunity but also felt a heavy responsibility on my shoulders. I learned tons about accessibility best practices and the importance of progress over perfection. If you feel lost about where to begin, start with one improvement — it’s one step closer to your goal.

In May, I traveled to Stockholm for my Intro Days! It felt a bit weird, because I joined the company in mid 2021, but because of the pandemic we had a virtual format and they made up for that last year. It was amazing to meet colleagues in person, speak to people from different parts of the company, and it was an exciting and inspiring experience.

In the summer, I embedded with a design system team and was faced with different challenges. This time, I wanted to figure out how to make generic layout components as accessible as possible. These components should be used by a lot of developers to build their features. Should these components have accessibility support out of the box? Should developers have to even think about accessibility? What happens if they forget to think about it? How can we get the best experience for the user? How can we increase the knowledge of developers who are using the generic components to level up the accessibility support even more? I honestly feel like I haven’t thought that much for a long time. 🤯 I was going for walks a lot just to sort my thoughts. Most days I tried out different solutions, got feedback from others and started over again because I forgot an important aspect. I’m pleased with the outcome and I even gave a talk (with live demo) about this topic in an internal conference at Spotify. 🤩

Because it was a talk about accessibility, I was pleasantly surprised to have a live audience of ~270 people with very different roles in the organization. Not sure how many people watched the recording since then, but it made my day to hear from a few people about how inspired they felt after watching the talk. So my goal to have an impact on at least one person is definitely achieved!

The rest of the year was a mix of working on other workstreams but always with a bit of accessibility work included. I love how I can have an impact this way. My newest challenge, after a chaotic December, is to find my path in a new team outside of design systems but with a bit more focus on feature development. It’s great to be challenged and to try out new things, and the learning curve is immense.

Tired of social media

I felt (and still feel) quite tired when it comes to social media. I’m confused about where to post content, if I can even think of something valuable to share.

For my sketchnotes from NSSpain conference, it was so exhausting to post on both platforms (Twitter and Mastodon). Honestly I won’t do this again the next time...

So at this point, I only post stories on Instagram from time to time. I have a private account, but if you want to send me a follow request and we both know each other, I will approve it. I even created a new Instagram account, @felibe444, where I could post my sketchnotes, but I never got over the initial barrier to actually start posting. 🫠

Twitter is not what it once was, so I seldomly check for news. I’m still not used to Mastodon and I don’t visit it very often either. I got access to Bluesky, but after I created my account, I lost motivation very quickly, so I never opened it again. It’s sad because Twitter felt like a home for my iOS bubble and friends, but life goes on, and I decided to just take it slow for now. Appreciate you all anyway. 🧡

Keep moving

2023 was my year of rock climbing and running!

I started running at the end of 2022 when my motivation for swimming was lacking a bit. I started very slowly with different approaches and with the support of some apps. In the end, I stuck with Nike Run Club because I love the healthy approach in the guided workouts. They make you aware not to compare yourself with others but to focus on yourself and your own journey. They also celebrate every start of the workout (yay) and emphasize that it’s okay not to have the best run every time. It’s not about numbers; it’s about leaving the couch, moving around, and getting your heart rate up! I really started to enjoy running, which never happened to me before.

Especially during summer, I loved going for a run after work. In autumn, when it got dark sooner, I had trouble finding a good time slot for my runs. I won’t go for a run when it’s dark because the park I usually run in has no lights. When I go for a run before work, I usually have very low energy in the afternoon and feel tired the whole day. Sometimes I can make it before my lunch break, but it is a bit trickier to organize with work. So I had quite a long break of two months at the end of the year when I wasn’t running at all. Now, in February, the days are getting longer again, and I can’t wait to go for a run after work again (actually it worked out yesterday and I loved it)! It’s a great workout for me to get out of work mode and to think about something else. It also doesn’t take as long as it would when I go swimming.

Climbing in 2023 was one of my constants. Something I’m always looking forward throughout the week. I had a few very successful climbing sessions and a lot more where I was not super happy with how it went. I did my first multi-pitch climb with my sister with 70 meters of climbing! That was awesome. But once in a while I have to define what success means for every session so I’m not disappointed. Sometimes it’s enough to have fun with easier climbs and don’t try the hard ones which are on my limit. Sometimes it’s hard to convince myself to be brave again and not let the fear win.

This one entry from my journal reflects my feelings quite well:

I watched a woman climb today. She was calm, focused, and made it look easy. She climbed a route I tried before – 15 meters, around two-thirds slight overhanging, followed by a roof. It was a 6 on UUID scale, so I thought I should be able to do it. Because of the overhanging part I was scared even before I started. Though most of the holds were good. I try to work on my fear of overhangs but every time I climb something like this and even if I succeed, it still feels super scary.

Seeing this woman climb the same route I struggled with, made me admire her skills. I couldn’t stop watching. After she finished, I told her how effortless it looked. She said she’s been climbing for over 10 years and this was just her warm-up. She climbs three times a week and worked a lot on overhangs to overcome her fear.

She’s put in a lot of effort over a long time to get so good. It’s important not to compare yourself to others. Focus on getting better and celebrate the small wins.

I gave up on the climb after two-thirds because I was too scared and tired. At first, I felt bad about it. Even though it was a level 6, I let fear stop me. But looking back, I started struggling with the climb a few meters in and managed to climb at least three more meters while scared. That’s a win. I tried, pushed myself and next time, I think I can climb even further.

One special highlight was going on a climbing vacation with my sister! We spent a week in the Chiemgau in the south of Germany, we climbed on one peak of the Kampenwand and she taught me how to do multi-pitch climbing! I really enjoyed the fact that we could hike, relax, climb, go to the spa, in the perfect change to treat our sore muscles 😅

Annual commit history

It’s a tradition to analyze my annual commit history at the end of December. The report is only from my personal work in 2023. Credits for the script go to @markusfisch.

  In 2023 you made 44 commits in 4 projects.
  The average length of a commit message was 47 characters.

  Commits per weekday
      Monday       3 ******************
     Tuesday       3 ******************
   Wednesday       1 ******
    Thursday       5 ******************************
      Friday      12 ************************************************************************
    Saturday       6 ************************************
      Sunday      14 ************************************************************************************

  Commits per month
         Jan       0 
         Feb       0 
         Mar      22 ************************************************************************************
         Apr       3 ***********
         May       1 ***
         Jun       5 *******************
         Jul       6 **********************
         Aug       0 
         Sep       2 *******
         Oct       0 
         Nov       5 *******************
         Dec       0 

  Lines added (+) and removed (-) per weekday
      Monday      67 ++++
     Tuesday      59 ++++
   Wednesday     166 ++++++++++++
    Thursday     267 +++++++++++++++++++
      Friday       5 
    Saturday      40 ++
      Sunday    1149 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  Lines added (+) and removed (-) per month
         Jan       0 
         Feb       0 
         Mar     382 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
         Apr      51 ++++
         May      -2 
         Jun     292 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
         Jul      20 +
         Aug       0 
         Sep    1014 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
         Oct       0 
         Nov      -4 
         Dec       0 

  Top 3 words in commit messages (ignoring words up to three letters)
      Update       8 ************************************************************************************
        main       6 ***************************************************************
       about       6 ***************************************************************
  

I wasn’t active in any side projects in 2023 besides some updates to my website, but I don’t really mind. For a long time, I thought that I have to work on side projects to prove myself as a developer, but nowadays I don’t really care. I like spending time away from the MacBook. We’ll see if it changes again.

I want to close this by sharing my most used and loved iOS apps from 2023:

• Sky Guide for watching the night sky with friends and family
• Gentle Streak for a more gentle approach to fitness and workouts
• Redpoint for tracking climbing workouts
• Lambus for organizing travel plans (especially together with someone else)

Do you have any favorites yourself?

Stay the best and be gentle to yourself in 2024. 🧡