The Year That Was 2022

Year 3

We entered year 3 of the global pandemic and humans continued to prove that common sense was a challenge, and that we live In a world In the full swing of a Misinformation Age.

Work from home was the norm at the start, there was a push by some companies to fully return to the office, a backlash forced many to shift to Hybrid or stay remote.

I suspect employers who continue to offer flexibility will attract and retain talent, even with a slight downturn In the market, finding and keeping great people is a focus area for most.

The Strava Machine

It was a bit of an average year to be honest. We did return to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne for EuroRAD5 which was as amazing as always … there is just something special about riding those mountains.

Image: Veloviewer in 2022

On the Work front

Well, that was a year to remember. Or forget. Both.

It started out pretty well, the tour into working in mental health was interesting, but sadly It was not to be, I found a set of circumstances playing out, which I am not going to get into, needless to say it was disappointing and also a little stressful until I concluded It just wasn’t for me, and I moved to a plan to complete a year and move on. Turns out that played out pretty well all round :)

It’s been exciting to be back in tech, and to learn about a new industry and some pretty cool technology in the Autonomous Vehicle world. It’s both fascinating and challenging, and I’m pretty excited to be part of the ramp to commercialization.

The Elon Factor

Well that Is ending poorly isn’t it. Elon managed to convince the world that he had Something … until he took on something where he has been exposed badly. Twitter Is going to implode, that is my prediction.

On the upside, Mastodon has taken off as we all figured out how to rebuild our communities, and for the geeks among us, we started playing with running our own servers. I certainly did.

Beach Houses

Last year we invested in a house that will eventually be our next living location. We found a run down place that an old guy had live in for 30 years and not maintained, either the house or the yard. So we got it for a good price (meaning a fair price not an overhyped market price) and have been working on the renovations and clearing the back yard. a re-wire, re-plumb and full drywall rebuild later, we have a nice livable house with new appliances and a great view.

Still work to be done inside, and also some repairs and paint etc outside, but it’s going to be worth it, and we have a few years before we want to migrate.

The Intersection

While working in the mental health space was not a great experience, my passion to help people through their challenges and provide the resources I didn’t have remains. And so was born The Intersection a place where people can find resources, read articles that may help them work through things, and optionally connect with a call to chat. This has been very rewarding and I have spoken with some very nice people and gained significant satisfaction myself.

And finally … this site!

It’s long been a plan of mine to host, build and run a little website of my own. I’ve previously done this on hosted platforms, The Intersection runs on Wordpress. But this site is all mine from the little Raspberry Pi this is running on through the OS and text based Hugo codebase with Markdown. It was all learning and fun :)

And so ends 2022. It was … a year … and 2023 looks to be full of fun, challenges and life.