2020: A year in pictures

This year has really been something.

Big contrast to the couple years that preceeded it. 2018 and 2019 were full of travel (for vacations and conferences) and sharing (blog posts, videos, talks, this newsletter)

In 2020, all of that fell to the side.

I moved to Amsterdam towards the end of 2019 and learned how long it takes to get used to a new job, new city, new everything.

I was lucky to make 3 quick trips to Goa, London and Majorca, just before 2020 started. Little did I know that would be the last time I leave the country for more than a year!

Because most of my coworkers are in different countries, I made a queit little corner of the house my home office. This really came in handy later, for you know what.

I spent a lot of time working on the redesign of codesandbox and chipping away slowly on an open source component library, react-ui.

Then the pandemic hit, and it hit hard.

Even though I was used to working from home, it was different this time. Without a formal separation, it’s hard to tell the difference between working from home and living at work. I spent all my time at home and the majority of it in front of a screen.

With a ban on group gatherings, there was no football anymore. I started running to get some exercise outdoors. De Kom (The bowl), an intersection of canals, became a recurring feature for the rest of the year.

Luckily, I wasn’t alone. My partner and I have been living together for a few years, but we have never spent all 24 hours for weeks in a row. I’m counting it as a personal achievement that we came out of the year stronger.

I was incredibly lucky that my job provided stability during a time that was really hard on others (including my partner).

I built a few features at work, gave a few talks online, but honestly, it’s all a blur.

Late April, I tried to build a writing habit, it didn’t stick.

After the lockdown that spanned multiple months was relaxed, I took a month off work in the summer. it was my favorite time of the year. In June, we went for a socially distant beach visit 😅

Played Pictionary and Among Us with friends online. Having an online network at a time when everything was online was really helpful. 💖

I spent A LOT of time outdoors in parks, on long walks, running. 3 months of blissful summer makes you forget 9 months of rain and cold. The virus numbers had plateaued and things were looking up.

I started working on a devtools for tailwind as a creative outlet and became serious about experimentation as a way of finding useful features. I must have posted over 30 GIFs of work in progress on twitter. I truly am my happiest when I can channel my creative energy into building something.

Holiday season was over.

Leaves started falling, the city still looked pretty. But, virus numbers started growing, Netherlands went into a second lockdown. My favorite cafe where I built most of UI Devtools shut down for the rest of year.

I lost the rhythm or routine I had built over the summer. It feels silly to complain about rhythm in this year. My partner was still looking for a job, we were comtemplating moving countries.

The rest of the year is a blur again, I spent all my time focused solely on my job and launching my side project.

I was happy with the kind of work that I was doing - with a focus on interactions and UX, even though it got stressful with a lot of projects in their final stages. Working together with kind people is that “one weird trick” in tech.

On the side project front, It took forever to wrap up but I launched my side project UI Devtools with an unconventional pricing model as an attempt to create sustainable open source projects. This went way better than I had expected, at the end of the year, there are 69 folks sponsoring my open work. ✨

I kept my running habit. I’ve noticed my mental health and physical health go hand in hand.

As the year came to a close, I can’t help but notice a big chunk of my identity was wrapped up in my job. That’s not healthy.

The theme for 2020 was execution.

In 2021, I want to focus on sharing what I’ve learned - blog posts, videos hopefully revive this newsletter as part of that.

And a lot more visits to De Kom.

I hope you have a wonderful year ahead!

Random stats for shits and giggles

0.5 books read

3 train rides

443.82 KMs run

59 visits to Beatrixpark

677 github commits

2021 tweets (coincidence?!)

1829389i312 hours spent on tiktok