So long, 2022
Happy new year, everyone!
2022 is now done. I’m still recovering from the new year party’s hangover, but I’ve been wanting to write a chronicle of sorts about all the important bits and pices that happened in 2022 in my life for a while now, so here goes nothing.
Work
At the start of 2022, I left my previous gig at gotoAndPlay, as I really wanted to focus on design systems engineering and that focus was not attainable in that coding agency setting.
I joined Sixfold at the start of February. My official role is “Design Engineer”, which basically means that I’m doing (front-of-the-frontend) engineering work on the design team. I maintain the component library / design system in code, but also help out with stuff on the Figma side.
During the year we rebranded our main product to Transporeon Visibility Hub, as we’re a quite important part of Transporeon, and want to provide a full set of cohesive products, so the separate brand did not make much sense anymore. This project gave me the opportunity to showcase what I do best - most of the rebrand, aside from content changes, is frontend work! I got to build a design token system that supported the change, implement some of the changes in the product, all while letting the product development teams mostly continue with their ongoing projects.
Recently, it was announced that Transporeon (together with Sixfold) is going to be acquired by Trimble, which is quite exciting.
Fairly happy with this choice - more focused work, less responsibilities, more pay! All in all this contributed to lowering my stress levels quite a bit.
Health
I wouldn’t say I focused on this area too much, to be fair - I think I’m generally quite healthy person, but some changes still happened.
At the start of 2022, I wasn’t too happy with my weight - in the pandemic years, when I’ve been staying home a lot more, it crossed the 100kg mark. Some of my clothes did not fit anymore, so this prompted a necessary change! I don’t exercise much - an occasional bike ride in the summer, and just trying to walk to most places is pretty much enough for me. So I approached this from a different angle and focused on what and how much I eat. Essentially, just eat better and healthier foods and consume less calories. Mission successful, I guess, as by now I’ve lost more than 20kg (so down from 103kg to around 83kg now).
I’ve also tried to drink less alcohol, not very successfully though. If I party, then I party. I’ve just been going to less parties. Maybe I’m getting old.
Family
I’m an uncle now since about August!
Not much else has happened in this area really. I haven’t really interacted with the extended family too much, something something about burnout and not having the energy to talk to all the relatives. I want to get better at this, though, so maybe this year?
Other relationships
I am still single :) Some fantastic new friends, however - thank you all for being a part of my life! In 2022 my heart also opened up again, which is both a positive and a negatve. Mostly positive, though. All one-sided love interests (if you know who you are, thank you for lighting up my days anyway), unfortunately, but I like myself better like this. The alternative is me being a little cynical bitch about everything.
Home
My home is my fortress. I still live alone with my cat, Latte. I did manage to finish some projects, though. I refreshed the interior of my home office a little bit, with a new chair and a standing desk.
I also managed to buy and install a bunch of lighting. I had been living with just a light bulb on a wire in most rooms in my apartment for nearly two years. I now have proper ceiling lights everywhere! Some of the lights are also smart, i.e. connected to a Hue Bridge, so I can change the color temperature and dim them. In addition, I also added some countertop LED strips to my kitchen, which is a really nice life improvement. With that project, I had to solder for the first time since the 6th grade, I think. Super useful skill that most people only use a couple of times in their lives.
Next up: the bedroom.
Year in film
Watching movies is still my favorite pastime, so of course there was lots of this. My life in film is still recorded on Letterboxd, so head there to see all the little details.
I logged 395 diary entries, which consumed about 730 hours of my life. The actual film count is a little lower, though, as the diary entries also include films I watched multiple times, and some TV shows.
There were lots of great movies released in the past year! My top includes “Top Gun: Maverick”, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, and “Fresh”. Somewhat surprisingly there are three horror-ish movies in my top 10 currently - in addition to “Fresh”, also “The Menu” and “Bones and All”. I don’t think I’ve had much horror in my top lists previously, even though I generally to like the genre. “Fresh” and “Bones and All” also represent my new favorite subgenre of horror, that being the cannibal romantic horror films. I hope more stuff like this is made in the future.
I attended two local film festivals - HÕFF (Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival) at the end of April, and PÖFF (Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival) in November. Both of these were very much fun - I like just filling up my calendar with film sessions and basically living in the cinema. Will definitely continue this trend.
I did not go to the cinema too much, though, which is a little sad. I did not count the sessions, but I think it’s less than 10. I’m still a huge fan of our local indie theatre, Elektriteater, but I did not visit too much last year. Something something about burnout again. I did not go to other cinemas, either - a topic for another post, perhaps, but I’ve been boycotting Apollo as they’ve been monopolizing the cinema business in Estonia. Anyway, looking to improve this - I very much like the cinema experience, and I also want to support the local businesses. If you’re reading this and want to help, call me up and let’s go and see some movies!
As an aside, there were also some fantastic new TV shows I enjoyed, like Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Bear.
Music
Not too much to say here, really. When I’m at home working, most of the time I sit in complete silence. So I haven’t been listening to a whole lot of new music.
Taylor Swift’s Midnights is definitely my top 1 album of the year - it’s such a nice breath of fresh air in my ears. Taylor also ruled my Spotify stats for 2022, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
A recent find, which I also like a lot, is Minimal Wind’s hi..
I did not attend any music festivals. I might’ve attended some concerts, but I don’t really have any special memories in this regard.
Reading and writing
I’ve been trying to write more, especially in the past months. Rebuilding this site on Astro and moving the hosting to Netlify has helped a little bit, as it helps me to work on the site together with the content. The old WordPress-based site was hard to work on, it did not have any CI set up either, so I think it held me back a lot. Let’s see if I can keep this up.
As for reading, not sure if I read any fiction in 2022. There might’ve been some work-related books, though, but I don’t really remember. On the magazine front, I haven’t bought any new magazines, but I managed to finish reading through the backlog of the last few issues of Offscreen, which had been sitting on a shelf for quite a while. Still my favorite magazine, and it’s a shame no new issues came out in 2022.
I also read some newsletters, most of those are work-related content, though. Those that are not - Sunday by Jack Cheng is always a very nice read, as is Roden by Craig Mod. Speaking of which, I gifted myself Kissa by Kissa by Craig Mod for christmas. Haven’t had time to read through it yet, but it has such a nice feel in the hand.
What next?
Still here? Gongrats, you’ve reached the end of my monologue. I probably forgot to mention a lot, so I might amend the post later.
Happy new year, again, and may it be better than the last!