2023 In Review

I thought I'd try one of these. 2023 in review. I happen to have the need to write some stuff off my chest. 2023 was not my best year.

The peak-end-rule states that people tend to judge an experience based on how they felt during it's peak or most memorable moment and at its end. I guess this applies to my year. There are two peaks I can think of that were nice and memorable experiences. But boy, did I have a crappy ending to my year. And not just a crappy December but crappy moments throughout the year and then an extra crappy three months.

Peaks

Let's start with the positive. In the first week of January I had a very lovely and very memorable trip with my part of the family to the Efteling; a wonderful amusement park in The Netherlands. I've been there as a kid perhaps two times and once at age 19 but I remember being disappointed at not getting to see large parts of the park. This time we spent three days and two nights at the park. Both my boys had a lovely time and this big, adult kid got to go in all the rides he liked. It was early in the year but it is still topping all other experiences as being the most memorable.

The second peak was my summer trip with the family. We didn't go far from home but we did find lovely weather. We got to test out our new tent and it was great! We recently bought it and it was pretty expensive but well worth the money. The folding trailer we had previously offered a lot of space but the sleeping comfort was terrible. This tent had dark sleeping cabins and we had invested in proper mattresses. The kids slept better on account of it being darker and my wife—who is a sensitive sleeper—slept well on the mattresses. The kids also had a great time building dams in the creek that went past the campsite. My oldest even went down the rapids that were created by the dams on an inflatable raft.

End of Year

That was it for my peaks I'm afraid. If I would wreck my brain I could probably come up with a bunch of other nice memories of things that happened this year but nothing that is top of mind. As the peak-end-rule states, it's the peaks that remain top of mind, and the end of the experience. And my end of year has been a bit difficult.

Doppelganger

One of the negative things that stays top of mind actually started in January and has to do with my Shopify app Doppelganger. I had planned to make big changes in 2023 in order for the app to stay relevant in light of Shopify adding features natively to the platform; features I sought to solve with my app. But I never really got to start on making those changes. The first issues started in January when Shopify changed the URL on which the store backend runs. It broke my install flow and merchants couldn't install the app anymore. After fixing that, the issues were not over. The refactor to fix my install flow introduced an issue with the validation of session tokens. As soon as a session token became invalid, my app had issues with retrieving a new session token. Both the install flow and this session token issue were due to improper implementation on my side. I have always struggled with the authentication and authorization part of building the app. It's not something I had done before. And that's where I'm still stuck. I know how to solve it, but finding the time and energy to work on it has proven to be difficult.

Personal life

At home, life has been busy and energy draining. I've got young kids, which can be energy draining on it's own, but the last year has been especially tough. My youngest one has been needing extra attention and potentially has a form of autism. Bedtime has been one of those things that take extra time and energy on account of my youngest son. On average, I would end my day at 9:30PM, after which I no longer have the mental energy to get behind the computer. Even on weekends I often wasn't able to find time. Other stuff had to get done. And then came the big whopper. Halfway through October I got a call from my wife—who was elsewhere in the country doing try-outs for the national roller derby team—saying she broke her leg. She had broken both her tibia (shinbone) and fibula clean through. This meant her full leg was to be in a cast and she wouldn't be able to do anything by herself anymore. I suddenly had to take care of her, the kids, the house, and I had to work full hours. We're two and a half months into it now and the end is not in sight yet. I'm very lucky to have a support network so close by. Both me and my wife's parents live close by. From time to time they take dinner or laundry off my hands. And they often pick up the kids from school so that I can get some work done. If energy and motivation to work on my side-project was hard to come by before, it is non-existent now.

Next Year

So I guess it is safe to say I've had better years. And I'm sure 2024 is going to be one of those better years. My wife's physical health will slowly improve. We'll be getting professional guidance that should help with the troubles we've been having with our youngest son. Right after Christmas break I'll start a fun project at work; a refactor of a very important feature that should increase performance of it drastically. And I've got renewed determination—not energy but determination—to work on my app. I'm starting easy with a fun and light task: creating a landing page for Marquee Development; my company's name. This should return some of my energy and motivation for the project. And once I've got the hang of it again, I'll fix the issues with my app and continue on building the new features.

Wishing everybody that reads this a happy and healthy 2024.