2023: A year in review

As the year draws to a close I look back and realise there is a lot to be thankful for in 2023. Initially I thought, where did the time go? Did I do anything this year at all? After a while memories started to flow and, well, it turns out 2023 was another busy year full of events worth being remembered. Indeed, having a look at my agenda, there is a lot to remember in 2023.

For one, I visited a lot of places, old and new. Undoubtedly the highlight was our trip to Japan with a last-minute ticket. Such an unforgettable experience! So much so that I wrote a 60-page booklet with the travel diary. However there is much more to it than Japan as we had a great day in Segovia, enjoyed Gandía and Valencia, left Lisbon and New Delhi wishing we had had more time to explore and, last but not least, revisited Madrid, El Toboso and Alhama de Aragón to name a few places. All this traveling left a tally of nice photos, mostly taken with my mobile, some with my Canon 400D and very few on a yet to be developed film roll with my first SLR, a Canon EOS300.

And related to photos, this year I spent some time developing my own script to create collages, a project which is permanently work-in-progress and for which I never seem to find enough time. Although it is also fair to say that it already covers about 90% of my use cases, ie an easy way to create a matrix out of several photos to publish it in my blog. It is difficult to tell what is my best (public) photo of the year with so many contending nice ones. Oddly enough considering the marvelous photos in Japan, maybe the best one is the photo I snapped of a lone jogging woman in Berlin?

This also reminds me that this year I wanted to do more sport, which I didn't. If it counts, I played a lot of table tennis with my son during Summer. Good that soon is the time for New Year resolutions again :-) And while sport may not have been my forte this year, one thing I did reasonably well was to keep a curious attitude while learning new stuff both at work and at home through books and online courses. Growth mindset is not a one off effort.

Work wise, I ended up working way more hours than I intended to in my new role as Chief Product Owner Digital Business Solutions. Mostly fun but one to watch out in 2024. The trips to Derby and Stuttgart were a blast, showing the world what we are doing and getting incredibly encouraging feedback. People just love our product and receiving the RR internal Trusted to Deliver Excellence award was the icing on the cake.

Not everything was great, of course, but as Michael Ende said, that is another story and shall be told another time.