2022: Year in review

When the year closes, it's always a good moment to reflect on the past years achievements to see the bigger picture. If I look back to my achievements, I am proud and grateful for all I've achieved with support of people around me.

A lot of things that have been in the works seemed to click this year and directed my career into a new path, more focussed on engaging people over code. Something that suits me at this point in my career.

The talks 🎤

I love sharing knowledge and talk shop with peers, and I've had the opportunity to be able to speak at one of the biggest Vue venues in the world: Vue Amsterdam. This was my first conference talk and I started with a bang. Together with a colleague of mine, we've closed the first day of the conference, standing before an audience of 1000 people.

That first opportunity got me very excited and I sought out more speaking engagements by answering to Call for Papers, which led me to be featured at Frontmania (also in person) as well as another big virtual venue: NuxtNation.

The speaking engagement at Frontmania again led to being asked to write an article for the Frontmania 2023 magazine!

At work 💪

The effort I've put in the mentioned talk at VueJs was recognised by my employer and I was awarded official recognition (called "Gele Wimpel").

I've been working together with my team lead on landing a promotion by documenting the work I was already doing and this too has been formalised with a new role within the company. In this now role I will also be transitioning to a new team and will have more opportunities to engage with other teams, people and seek external opportunities as well, so it perfectly aligns with my journey of last year.

I attended my first hackathon. It gets organised yearly by Jumbo: I'm not a big fan of hackathons, but this year I was invited by a team and gave it a shot. We had good fun working on our prototype and we were actually rewarded with the People's Choice award!

The side hustle 📷

Photography is a big hobby of mine and I try to bring my camera along whenever I expect gorgeous landscapes, wild cliffs or exotic views. Some of my photographs are published on Unsplash.com and I've reached the milestone of 25 million accumulative views on my contributions!

Apart from posting to Unsplash, I'm also selling work via ArtHeroes, which brought in a bit of cash as well. I'm super proud that people are willing to pay for something that's a hobby to me!

See the world 🗺️

Last year marked somewhat of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was able to travel again! We use HomeExchange to find places to stay and we visited Sweden (where our kids learned to ski!). In spring we managed to visit Normandy and Paris in France and Bruges and Ghent in Belgium.

For our summer holiday we finally could make the trip we've been waiting for for two years (cancellations and postponed due to COVID-19). We've travelled to and through Thailand with our kids. It was such a wild adventure!

Stay healthy 🏋️

As the pandemic highlighted (and my age as well, to lesser extent): staying healthy and fit is important and takes work. In 2021 I managed to rake in 1500 kilometers on my Sensa Romagna. I figured I should be able to top it, but failed to meet the ambitious 1750 kilometers! I managed to scrape 1250 kilometers this year, which is a bit of a disappointment, but maybe it just wasn't a good cycling year?

With the boxing lessons cancelled I was actually surprised how much I enjoyed (finishing) a session at the gym. Mostly done powerlifting, usually twice a week even. While I wasn't cycling as much, I got plenty of exercise.

Up next...

I have a bit of exciting stuff lined up for next year, but this will be hard to top. Looking forward to getting stuff done in the next year. Let's make it a healthy and productive one! 😘✌️

Best wishes!