I started a new role #
The first big thing that happened this year was leaving my previous role at RoweIT for pastures new at Series Eight. For me, this was a huge decision and one that has paid off time and time again. I’ve seen myself heading towards a full time remote role for a matter of years, and the pandemic gave me the opportunity to see if I could work in a remote environment while also having two young children. Luckily the opportunity arose with Series Eight, and its worked out very well! It’s also great to be working properly in the front end side of development again, and seeing what has changed in the couple of years I’ve been out of it.
I started working with a bunch of new tech #
Jumping back into a full time dev role, I was introduced to a whole world of new things, now mainly using Tailwind and AlpineJS on top of Craft and Shopify sites. I’ve also started using Eleventy, finally jumping on the hype train and have been really pleased with the results.
Dev Community game was weak #
After spending a few months near the end of last year being much more active on social media than I normally am, I fell out of habit with it. Mainly due to a busy personal life at the time, so didn’t have the time as much to hang out on the Frontend Horse discord as I would’ve liked to.
I also didn’t write, at all, from March until now. I had been writing a post on React components - at the time it was the start of a series on React as I was keen to learn it. The interest soon waived and I found myself struggling to finish it. Rather than just sling out Weeknote posts in the meantime, I took some time (admittedly more than I wanted in hindsight) to reevaluate what I wanted to write about. I’ve since gathered a ton of inspiration and topics to write about, so hopefully I’ll start posting more next year.
I went to Portugal #
I also went abroad for the first time in years, and in doing so completely went out of my normal comfort zone. Not the biggest fan of flying, or navigating airports by myself, I found myself doing both (well, navigating an airport alone on the way back at least). This was over to Ericeria in Portugal, for Series Eights annual team retreat. It was great to see everyone in person rather than over a webcam.
I did a few activities I’ve always wanted to try but held back from doing it; surfing (kind of, more like “how can I not drown while Im attached to this”) and paddleboarding. All in all, a really good time. You can read more about it on S8’s site at https://serieseight.com/journal/ericeira-2022-our-biggest-and-best-team-trip-yet
Music stats #
Top Artists #
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IDLES
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Nine Inch Nails
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Biffy Clyro
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clipping.
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Radiohead
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Jamie Lenman
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Foo Fighters
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Kendrick Lamar
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Lamb of God
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Rammstein
Top Albums #
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Joy as an Act of Resistance. by IDLES
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Ultra Mono by IDLES
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CRAWLER by IDLES
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To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar
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There Existed An Addiction To Blood by clipping.
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Brutalism by IDLES
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Zeit by Rammstein
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The Myth of the Happily Ever After by Biffy Clyro
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Splendor & Misery by clipping.
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Madvillainy by Madvillain
German stats #
I decided to up my personal development and pick up another language using Duolingo this year too, and picked back up my German lessons. Got to a streak of 243 days so far, which is my longest to date. Feel like I’m getting used to how sentences are formed - slightly - so can only hope that continuing on with it in 2023 will be the same.