It’s 4:30a as I’m writing this, jetlagged after getting home from a trip to Mexico and New York for the holidays. Thankfully there’s a silver lining to my inability to sleep: a brief window of quiet to reflect and write about my past year.

My 2023 was largely defined by building a new life after moving from New York to Germany. I’ve never been one for setting goals, preferring instead to meander through things as my interest waxes and wanes. Even so, I’d say the list of accomplishments for the year constitutes as progress, even though I don’t really have a clear definition of what “progress” means.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Moved to Germany: After a decade of saying I wanted to live in Europe, this is the year it finally became a reality.
  • In doing so I’ve subsequently learned that the grass is indeed always greener on the other side. A year of living here has backfired and has me re-romanticizing New York.¹
  • I’m having a great time though! Germany has been a generous host. I’ve been learning a lot and getting a whole new perspective on life that I couldn’t have gotten had I stuck around in NYC.
• Learned some German: Progress has been slow, but if anything I’m happy that a language I once considered complete gibberish now makes some vague form of sense. I can read things on the street and even understand some basic dialogue!
• Wrote and read poetry: I occasionally write poetry but keep it to myself out of insecurity. This year marked the first time I opened up a bit and read one of my poems at an open mic night. It felt great, and I’m hoping getting past the first attempt will make me more willing to read/write more poetry this year.
• Met up with fellow Merveillians
  • The Merveilles community continues to have an outsized impact on my perspectives around technology and life.
  • This year marked the first time I was able to meet a number of members in-person, converting digital acquaintances into real-life friendships! It was a wonderful experience and I’m sincerly hoping it’s the first of many.
• Did lots of notetaking and journaling I switched my personal wiki from Obsidian to TiddlyWiki this year. I can’t place exactly why, but this seems to have greatly increased the amount I write.
  • 2023 is the year I’ve written the most journal entries: 194 out of 365 days (53%)
  • As of today I’ve written 2,714 notes. 26 of these are published publicly on this website.²
• Published some recipes on my website, which can be found on the Cooking page.
  • This is mostly notable as a signal for finally shifting this website away from a generic tech blog in favor of a digital garden.
• Switched to Linux: After over a decade of trying, I’ve managed to switch over to using Linux as my primary operating system. I even requested a Linux laptop instead of a Mac for my new job!
  • For those who are curious, Fedora on a Framework 13 with swaywm is the combo that finally stuck.
• Learned Clojure: I built a static site generator in Clojure and wrote a blog post about it.
  • Unfortunately I realized my newbie-level Clojure wasn’t the best for my website and switched back to Jekyll midway through the year. I’m hoping to revisit this though!
  • This opened Pandora’s box to also start experimenting with Babashka and, more recently, start playing with Fennel.
• Built a couple of other little projects for experimenting with new technologies and ideas that popped into my mind during the year.
  • FeedOn: A Mastodon to RSS bridge
  • Citibike Explorer: A Citibike trip volume visualizer built to explore streaming SQLite data directly in a browser.

… and that’s a wrap! Thanks for reading and here’s to a great 2024 to come 🎊.

P.S. This entry was inspired by @eli_oat’s New Year, Julia Evans’ 2023: Year in review, and @mrshll’s New Year, 24 posts. Check ‘em out if you’re curious as to what some other interesting people have been up to this past year.