Reflections on the first year in a new job

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The personal website and blog of James Darling

My long reflection on the year that was

Another year done and I can't quite believe thats a quarter of this century gone already. Doesn't feel 25 years since Y2K. Life Let's start with a quick work update. There's much I'd love to say in public but due to the type of firm it becomes difficult quickly but safe to say it's been a challenging and stressful year with many successes but also a few dings that I could certainly have helped steer in a different direction.

A yearnote for 2025.

My work year finished Friday and with no real plans other than Christmas movies and reading comics for the next week or so I thought I’d try and round-up 2025. TL;DR – It was fine. The highli…

Welcome to 2026. It sure has been a year already in terms of world events. Nevertheless, I’m going to talk a bit about how my 2025 was, the same procedure as every year. _On the photos: there’s one photo for each month, in chronological order._ ## Professional life I make my living by working as a software engineer. It’s a job that I really enjoy: building software is a lot of fun. Early in 2025, I left my job and ventured out as an independent consultant. Most of my year was spent with a big corporate client where I worked on modernizing the tools and the infrastructure for orchestrating their data processing jobs – classic data engineering work. It was a nice project and I really enjoyed working with the team. All in all, I’d consider my first year a success. That said, it’s not like I have figured this business out. I found the big gig by bumping into a friend at a party. That was lucky, but now I need to do it again. I’ve been struggling a bit to explain what it is that I want to do and what it is that I excel at. In lieu of a focused pitch, here are a few things I do: * Got a Python backend that is a bit slow? Would you like to make it go faster? Maybe some Rust would help? Hit me up. * Are you using Amazon S3 or another object storage in anger? Need someone to dig deep into the details? Hit me up. If you get me on your team, I’ll also fix your development environment1, make your GitHub Actions pipeline’s cache work, be endlessly patient with AWS IAM problems, and foster an enviroment where it’s okay to not know things. Now I’m again open to new engagements. If you would like to work with me, send me an e-mail or connect on LinkedIn and let’s talk. ## Software engineering community My main way of engaging with the software engineering community was public speaking. * I gave a lightning talk at HYTRADBOI about Why S3’s conditional writes made people excited (see also the the companion blog post). * In May, I gave a talk about compressing floating point data with Gorilla at Helsinki Python Meetup. * In September at PyCon UK and again in October at PyCon Finland, I gave a talk about using Python and Rust together. I also wrote a post on setting up uv and Maturin so that they work together. It was fun to give the talks and I’m hoping to continue it this year. I have at least one idea for a talk about data storage. ## Other life events I bought a home. I wasn’t planning for it, but the landlord decided to sell the apartment I was living in and after taking a look at the housing market, I ended up buying it. Now I get to renovate it. It would be amazing to finally live in an apartment with a dishwasher. Wish my luck. ## Outdoors life It was a weird year for me. I had no big adventures (apart from sailing from Scotland to Norway), which feels a bit disappointing. On the other hand, I climbed more than ever, skated more than ever, and ran more than ever. It was a year of courses. I took a tour skating course, two kayaking courses, two climbing courses (introductions to lead climbing and climbing outdoors), and two first aid courses. I also acted as an assistant teacher on an introductory kayaking course. I tend to take courses too late, so that I already know the stuff they’re going to teach. Still, the social element of learning together is enjoyable. I did publish a couple of posts on my outdoors newsletter Small Rapids - see the archive. The most popular one was the one about ditching Spotify called _You can still listen to .mp3s_. In 2026, I’m going to do a big hike again, that’s for sure. ## Best of 2025 * **Best new album:** _Neko-a-Sekai_ by Tinyhawk & Bizzarro. They play groovy instrumental rock. It’s both a lot of fun and it leaves me in awe of their skill. * **Best book read:** _Matara_ by Matias Riikonen. It’s about a group of boys spending the summer playing society that just so happens to resemble Ancient Rome. I enjoyed Riikonen’s rich language and how the book takes play seriously. (The book has not yet been translated to English.) * **New favorite writer:** Anne Carson. Have you read _Autobiography of Red_? There’s surprisingly lot to it considering how little it is. ## Traditional commentary on Finnish politics _In each yearnote, I express (lack of) surprise at the current cabinet of the goverment of Finland._ Like I predicted, prime minister Petteri Orpo’s cabinet held together through the whole year. It wasn’t because lack of scandals! However, Orpo has his eyes on the ball and will get through every crisis to reach his party’s policy goals. I am impressed by his commitment to the cause. Nevertheless I believe that the cabinet will fall apart before the parliamentary election of 2027. The cabinet has already got massive policy changes done and there’s always a chance to score a few points in the eyes of voters by breaking up. As the election approaches, I bet both True Finns and Swedish People’s Party will get anxious about their popularity. Thus it’s more likely than not that the cabinet will break up before the year is over. * * * 1. Fixing the development environment used to mean things like making sure that the tests can be run locally and that the IDE features work. In 2026, that probably also means ensuring that the coding agents can be run reliably and _safely_. New challenges! ↩︎

<figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/merikoski_hu_c4a136f86046e282.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/merikoski.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> <p>In my <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2025-01-08-yearnote-2024.html">last post</a>, I wrote about my plans for this year:</p> <blockquote> <p>This time I’m trying to be more intentional, especially career-wise.</p> </blockquote> <p>I concluded that it is time for me to move on from my position as a software engineer at Oura Health. I had a great two and a half years there, building and operating the backend-slash-database that is the main data store of the company, and I learned a lot about Python, Rust, AWS services, cloud databases, and scaling backend systems.</p> <p>However, I want to focus even more closely on how data is stored in the cloud. Therefore I’m planning to venture out as an independent expert.</p> <p>More on that later. Meanwhile, if you’ve got exciting opportunities for me, <a href="mailto:miikka.koskinen@iki.fi">email me</a> or <a href="https://fi.linkedin.com/in/miikka-koskinen-a20006239">connect on LinkedIn</a>.</p> <p><strong>Photo:</strong> A view of Merikoski power plant in Oulu in early January.</p>

<p>It’s 2025 now. This century is now 25% complete! As is <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2024-01-08-yearnote-2023.html">my tradition</a>, I’m going to reflect on the year gone by.</p> <p><em>On the photos: there’s one photo for each month, in chronological order.</em></p> <p> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-01_hu13913827992445942839.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="400" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-01.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-02_hu4831620802172685896.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-02.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> </p> <h2 id="software-engineering">Software engineering</h2> <p>At work, I continued to build cloud backends to manage data. I ended up spending a lot of time with Rust, OpenTelemetry, Docker, GitHub Actions (GHA). Out of these technologies, learning Rust was great and trying to use OpenTelemetry only led to frustration.</p> <p>Docker and GHA got the job done. Later I posted about <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2024-12-08-weeknote-17-caching-docker-builds.html">how to cache Docker builds</a>.</p> <p>Later in the year, I spent some time on clarifying how we do <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2024-08-18-weeknote-1-schema-evolution.html">schema evolution</a>. Then I switched to building <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2024-09-08-weeknote-4-debugging-tools.html">developer tooling</a>. That was a nice change of pace. Building tools is fun and when you build internal tooling, your end users are right there.</p> <p>The tooling project led me to revisit Python packaging. <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2024-11-24-weeknote-15-tech-radar.html#hold">It didn’t go well</a>.</p> <h2 id="rust-in-production">Rust in production</h2> <p>The Rust project was interesting. We implemented a new web backend in Rust and shipped it to production. We managed to run into a lot of rough spots in the Rust web dev ecosystem.</p> <p>For starters, async Rust is Rust in hard mode and it’s also work-in-progress – for example, <a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/12/21/async-fn-rpit-in-traits.html"><code>async fn</code> was allowed in traits</a> only right when we were starting the project. This was the first real Rust project for all of us, so there was a bit of a learning curve.</p> <p>Then we ran into numerous <a href="https://github.com/launchbadge/sqlx">sqlx</a> issues. The <a href="https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-rust">OpenTelemetry crates</a> are unstable and there are regular breaking changes which increased the maintenance burden. If you’re used to Python testing tools, Rust just isn’t on the same level - we struggled with fixtures and with mocking AWS services.</p> <p>Not everthynig was bad. For routing we used <a href="https://github.com/poem-web/poem">Poem</a>, which got the job done even if it was pretty verbose. <a href="https://www.cargo-lambda.info/">Cargo Lambda</a> was also great – it just worked and even cross-compilation works out of the box.</p> <p>It wasn’t the smoothest project, but at least we learned a lot. Later we were able to use that knowledge to introduce Rust into another system where it gets to shine for real.</p> <h2 id="software-engineering-community">Software engineering community</h2> <p>I didn’t have much time for open source, but I did create <a href="https://codeberg.org/miikka/paketoi">paketoi</a>, a command-line tool for building Python deployment packages for AWS Lambda. <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2024-04-23-paketoi-0.1.html">The announcement post</a> explains the motivation.</p> <p>I attended two conferences, <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2024-09-25-weeknote-6-heart-of-clojure.html">Heart of Clojure</a> and <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2024-10-13-weeknote-9-eurorust-2024.html">EuroRust 2024</a>. In-person conferences are great except that I got predictably sick afterwards.</p> <p>At Heart of Clojure, I gave a lightning talk where I said that you should blog more. You should blog more!</p> <p> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-03_hu1144783784597801796.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-03.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-04_hu16608502517941736607.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-04.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> </p> <h2 id="blogging">Blogging</h2> <p>In August, I started posting <a href="https://quanttype.net/tags/weeknote.html">weeknotes</a>. Having a weekly writing routine was a big success. Even if most of the posts are nothing special, it got my writing engine going. Many of the posts sparked nice conversations with colleagues, friends, and Internet strangers.</p> <p>This year, my most read post was <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2023-10-31-do-not-use-requirements.txt.html"><em>Do not use requirements.txt</em></a> (my most popular post ever!). Out of the articles I’ve posted this year, <a href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2024-09-25-weeknote-6-heart-of-clojure.html">the trip report on Heart of Clojure</a> was the most popular one.</p> <p>I also announced that I’m starting a newsletter for my outdoors adventures called <a href="https://smallrapids.net/">Small Rapids</a>. The first post is still waiting for itself, but I promise it is coming soon! It will be about tour skating and ice safety.</p> <p>It was great to get back to writing in public and I want continue it in 2025. I’m hoping to write a couple of better-researched and better-edited posts.</p> <h2 id="microblogging">Microblogging</h2> <p>I’m <a href="https://mastodon.social/@Miikka/">active on Mastodon</a>. Check out my most banger posts:</p> <ol> <li><a href="https://mastodon.social/@Miikka/113685312562758126">My favorite Wikipedia illustration</a></li> <li><a href="https://mastodon.social/@Miikka/113492596590845476">HTML cable car</a></li> <li><a href="https://mastodon.social/@Miikka/112757676373796883">Mt. Wank cable car</a></li> </ol> <p>Looks like Fediverse enjoys cable cars.</p> <p> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-05_hu4937626070371904807.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-05.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-06_hu125160259681118761.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-06.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> </p> <h2 id="outdoors-life">Outdoors life</h2> <p>It was a good outdoors year. It began with a cold winter in Helsinki, which meant that I got plenty of good opportunities to skate on the sea ice.</p> <p>In the spring, I ran regularly. This paid off when I decided on a whim to go hike in Urho Kekkonen National Park after Midsummer. Never has hiking been so easy! I spend a few days there, visiting Paratiisikuru and taking the high route whenever possible.</p> <p>It was actually my first hike that was over 100 km. I was going to do one already in 2020 - I was hoping to hike Kungsleden in Sweden - but I had to cancel it due to COVID-19. Back then it felt like such a big goal. Now it was just something I did without much thought.</p> <h2 id="paddling">Paddling</h2> <p>My big summer project was to learn to roll a sea kayak. I started by taking a course by <a href="https://www.rollingkayak.fi/">Anssi Nupponen</a>. Anssi’s teaching was great, but two days was not enough for me to learn even a butterfly roll. However, I learned enough to practice myself.</p> <p>After a bunch of sessions, I managed to do sweep roll on one side. Later at the rescue practice camp of my kayak club, I managed to roll the kayak reliably in pretty big waves – big for Baltic Sea, that is. That felt great.</p> <p>Maybe in 2025 I will learn to do it from the other side. It would be fun to learn some other rolls, too.</p> <h2 id="climbing">Climbing</h2> <p>In the spring, I learned to climb on top rope. I didn’t go climbing outdoors too many times, but <a href="https://mastodon.social/@Miikka/113258489685472139">I had good time when I did</a>. This year, I hope to learn to lead climb.</p> <p> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-07_hu8927905419234148851.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="400" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-07.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-08_hu16121000139143159431.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-08.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> </p> <h2 id="best-of-2024">Best of 2024</h2> <ul> <li><strong>Best new album:</strong> <a href="https://wejazzrecords.bandcamp.com/album/lehto-korpi"><em>Lehto / Korpi</em></a> by Pauli Lyytinen. Who could not love saxophone improvisation on top of bird song field recordings?</li> <li><strong>Best gig:</strong> The secret gig at <a href="https://wejazz.fi/2024/">We Jazz</a> where Antti Lötjönen, Heli Hartikainen and Aino Juutilainen played together. The atmosphere of the gig was something else, so focused. You just had to be there.</li> <li><strong>Most interesting book read:</strong> <em>Raukoilla rajoilla</em> by Markku Eskelinen. It’s an iconoclastic history of Finnish prose and it filled me with new interest in Finnish literature. Eskelinen does not hold it in very high regard, but the counter-examples he points out are interesting.</li> <li><strong>New favorite writer:</strong> Lydia Davis. I read her latest book <em>Our Strangers</em> and her super-short short stories observing everyday life are wonderful.</li> </ul> <p> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-09_hu6399940615310782595.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="497.5" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-09.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-10_hu4395696120425083642.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-10.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> </p> <h2 id="what-about-2025">What about 2025?</h2> <p>Last year I wrote:</p> <blockquote> <p>What about 2024? I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out.</p> </blockquote> <p>I did not explicitly set out to figure it out and the result was that I did not figure it out. It left me feeling aimless. This time I’m trying to be more intentional<sup id="fnref:1"><a class="footnote-ref" href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2025-01-08-yearnote-2024.html#fn:1" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>, especially career-wise. I’m asking myself where I want to go. Haven’t answered it yet.</p> <p> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-11_hu3104866095923846287.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-11.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> <figure> <picture> <source srcset="/images/2024-12_hu4841571412015370519.webp" type="image/webp"/> <img height="450" loading="lazy" src="https://quanttype.net/images/2024-12.jpg" width="600"/> </picture> </figure> </p> <h2 id="traditional-commentary-on-finnish-politics">Traditional commentary on Finnish politics</h2> <p><em>In each yearnote, I express (lack of) surprise at the current cabinet of the goverment of Finland.</em></p> <p>A year ago I predicted that while the scandals will continue, Petteri Orpo will be able to hold his cabinet together. Looks like I was right for once!</p> <p>What about the next year? The closer we get to the election, more likely the cabinet is to fall apart. There are two reasons for this. First, the more time goes on, the more Orpo has been able to achieve and thus it’s less of an imperative to hold together. Second, the policies of the cabinet have been incredibly unpopular and the closer we get to the election, the more anxious the parties get to distance themselves from the cabinet.</p> <p>Orpo’s cabinet was formed in 2023 and the next parliamentary election is in 2027, so there’s still plenty of time to the next election. Thus my prediction is that Orpo’s cabinet will hold together for the next year. The turbulence from the upcoming municipal and county elections will not be enough to break it.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr/> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>It’s not that you have to wait for a year to change to start being intentional. The timing just happens to coincide. <a class="footnote-backref" href="https://quanttype.net/posts/2025-01-08-yearnote-2024.html#fnref:1" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p> </li> </ol> </div>

Just about 20 years ago I headed into the BBC Worldwide offices at Woodlands, the dirty brown office blocks on the wrong side of the A40 for the very last time. I went to my desk in C Block, put do…

Revenge, Oxfordian-magic, the deserts of Arrakis, and "last time we saw our heroes"

Revenge, Oxfordian-magic, the deserts of Arrakis, and "last time we saw our heroes"

Technology & identity in GDS and the NHS

It’s 2025 now. This century is now 25% complete! As is my tradition, I’m going to reflect on the year gone by. _On the photos: there ’s one photo for each month, in chronological order._ ## Software engineering At work, I continued to build cloud backends to manage data. I ended up spending a lot of time with Rust, OpenTelemetry, Docker, GitHub Actions (GHA). Out of these technologies, learning Rust was great and trying to use OpenTelemetry only led to frustration. Docker and GHA got the job done. Later I posted about how to cache Docker builds. Later in the year, I spent some time on clarifying how we do schema evolution. Then I switched to building developer tooling. That was a nice change of pace. Building tools is fun and when you build internal tooling, your end users are right there. The tooling project led me to revisit Python packaging. It didn’t go well. ## Rust in production The Rust project was interesting. We implemented a new web backend in Rust and shipped it to production. We managed to run into a lot of rough spots in the Rust web dev ecosystem. For starters, async Rust is Rust in hard mode and it’s also work-in-progress – for example, `async fn` was allowed in traits only right when we were starting the project. This was the first real Rust project for all of us, so there was a bit of a learning curve. Then we ran into numerous sqlx issues. The OpenTelemetry crates are unstable and there are regular breaking changes which increased the maintenance burden. If you’re used to Python testing tools, Rust just isn’t on the same level - we struggled with fixtures and with mocking AWS services. Not everthynig was bad. For routing we used Poem, which got the job done even if it was pretty verbose. Cargo Lambda was also great – it just worked and even cross-compilation works out of the box. It wasn’t the smoothest project, but at least we learned a lot. Later we were able to use that knowledge to introduce Rust into another system where it gets to shine for real. ## Software engineering community I didn’t have much time for open source, but I did create paketoi, a command-line tool for building Python deployment packages for AWS Lambda. The announcement post explains the motivation. I attended two conferences, Heart of Clojure and EuroRust 2024. In-person conferences are great except that I got predictably sick afterwards. At Heart of Clojure, I gave a lightning talk where I said that you should blog more. You should blog more! ## Blogging In August, I started posting weeknotes. Having a weekly writing routine was a big success. Even if most of the posts are nothing special, it got my writing engine going. Many of the posts sparked nice conversations with colleagues, friends, and Internet strangers. This year, my most read post was _Do not use requirements.txt_ (my most popular post ever!). Out of the articles I’ve posted this year, the trip report on Heart of Clojure was the most popular one. I also announced that I’m starting a newsletter for my outdoors adventures called Small Rapids. The first post is still waiting for itself, but I promise it is coming soon! It will be about tour skating and ice safety. It was great to get back to writing in public and I want continue it in 2025. I’m hoping to write a couple of better-researched and better-edited posts. ## Microblogging I’m active on Mastodon. Check out my most banger posts: 1. My favorite Wikipedia illustration 2. HTML cable car 3. Mt. Wank cable car Looks like Fediverse enjoys cable cars. ## Outdoors life It was a good outdoors year. It began with a cold winter in Helsinki, which meant that I got plenty of good opportunities to skate on the sea ice. In the spring, I ran regularly. This paid off when I decided on a whim to go hike in Urho Kekkonen National Park after Midsummer. Never has hiking been so easy! I spend a few days there, visiting Paratiisikuru and taking the high route whenever possible. It was actually my first hike that was over 100 km. I was going to do one already in 2020 - I was hoping to hike Kungsleden in Sweden - but I had to cancel it due to COVID-19. Back then it felt like such a big goal. Now it was just something I did without much thought. ## Paddling My big summer project was to learn to roll a sea kayak. I started by taking a course by Anssi Nupponen. Anssi’s teaching was great, but two days was not enough for me to learn even a butterfly roll. However, I learned enough to practice myself. After a bunch of sessions, I managed to do sweep roll on one side. Later at the rescue practice camp of my kayak club, I managed to roll the kayak reliably in pretty big waves – big for Baltic Sea, that is. That felt great. Maybe in 2025 I will learn to do it from the other side. It would be fun to learn some other rolls, too. ## Climbing In the spring, I learned to climb on top rope. I didn’t go climbing outdoors too many times, but I had good time when I did. This year, I hope to learn to lead climb. ## Best of 2024 * **Best new album:** _Lehto / Korpi_ by Pauli Lyytinen. Who could not love saxophone improvisation on top of bird song field recordings? * **Best gig:** The secret gig at We Jazz where Antti Lötjönen, Heli Hartikainen and Aino Juutilainen played together. The atmosphere of the gig was something else, so focused. You just had to be there. * **Most interesting book read:** _Raukoilla rajoilla_ by Markku Eskelinen. It’s an iconoclastic history of Finnish prose and it filled me with new interest in Finnish literature. Eskelinen does not hold it in very high regard, but the counter-examples he points out are interesting. * **New favorite writer:** Lydia Davis. I read her latest book _Our Strangers_ and her super-short short stories observing everyday life are wonderful. ## What about 2025? Last year I wrote: > What about 2024? I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out. I did not explicitly set out to figure it out and the result was that I did not figure it out. It left me feeling aimless. This time I’m trying to be more intentional1, especially career-wise. I’m asking myself where I want to go. Haven’t answered it yet. ## Traditional commentary on Finnish politics _In each yearnote, I express (lack of) surprise at the current cabinet of the goverment of Finland._ A year ago I predicted that while the scandals will continue, Petteri Orpo will be able to hold his cabinet together. Looks like I was right for once! What about the next year? The closer we get to the election, more likely the cabinet is to fall apart. There are two reasons for this. First, the more time goes on, the more Orpo has been able to achieve and thus it’s less of an imperative to hold together. Second, the policies of the cabinet have been incredibly unpopular and the closer we get to the election, the more anxious the parties get to distance themselves from the cabinet. Orpo’s cabinet was formed in 2023 and the next parliamentary election is in 2027, so there’s still plenty of time to the next election. Thus my prediction is that Orpo’s cabinet will hold together for the next year. The turbulence from the upcoming municipal and county elections will not be enough to break it. * * * 1. It’s not that you have to wait for a year to change to start being intentional. The timing just happens to coincide. ↩︎

I meant to write this before I left for the holidays in December but it feels like I'm only just catching my breath after some big work deadlines and personal things, along with school break and the m...

I mentioned in my yearnote that I want to focus on impactful writing - I think this means using the time I would spend on bi-weekly weeknotes for other types of writing, and making my weeknotes once a...

It always surprises me when someone can manage a "year in review" type post right at the beginning of January. For me, the year doesn't actually begin til at least a week or two in, once the children ...

My work year finished Friday and with no real plans other than Christmas movies and reading comics for the next week or so I thought I’d try and round-up 2025. TL;DR – It was fine. The highli…

I knew I’d forgotten to do something…