After moving my site to Hugo, lot of things have changed, and I haven’t been blogging. I decided to write a 2022 recap to inform you of the things I have been doing.
Work
2022 was my third year at Kinsta. I started on April 1st, 2020, so in about 4 months I’m having my 3 year anniversary. As a Marketing Manager for the Dutch Markets I have visited a nice amount of our clients to talk about their experiences and how we can do even better.
Last month we launched our Application & Database hosting services, a new adventure for Kinsta, one we have been building on the background for quite a while. Really looking forward seeing clients using our new services, besides our managed WordPress hosting services. All with the experiences people are used to at Kinsta. Fast, reliable hosting and incredibly fast support. (Yes, I’m biased :wink:)
Next year will be all about discovering and interacting with new communities. The WordPress community, one that I was (and will remain) active in, will not be forgotten. Kinsta will keep sponsoring a selected group of Meetups and possibly WordCamps too.
Social media
A lot happened on one of my favorite social media platforms, Twitter. It’s not my favorite anymore and I’ll tell you why.
As you might have heard, Elon Musk took over control of Twitter in October and since then made some radical decisions.
He fired top executives.
Shed two-thirds of the workforce
Lost a lot of advertisers (ok ,that’s not so bad for the users..).
Introduced and cancelled a new payment model
Reinstated the Trump account
These are all reasons (but not all) I stopped using Twitter since my last tweet on December 16th. I even removed the Twitter app from my smartphone.
Before decreasing my activity to zero on Twitter, I had registered for a Mastodon account on mastodon.social. I reactivated activity there and soon felt the urge to start my own instance. So, that’s what I did. Read more in the Tech stuff part.
Personal
I’ve actually read a few books in 2022. Not really something I used to do, but some subject require more knowledge. I really enjoyed reading these books, and can promise that I will continue to read more books in 2023. These are some of the books I read in 2022:
Ons geld is stuk - En waarom bitcoin de oplossing is (Dutch)
Digital Gold - Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money
Layered Money - From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies
The Bitcoin Standard - The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking
Webteksten die werken - 121 bullshit-vrije en meteen toepasbare tips (Dutch)
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
Fitness
Before and during COVID restrictions I could not work out in my preferred gym, so I decided to stop my plan there. Since COVID restrictions were all lifted I decided to go to a new gym, which I did starting November 2021. Three times a week I work out, not to become a new Schwarzenegger, no just to keep my body fit and strong to make sure I get no injuries while playing tennis.
I’m very happy to see I lost 5kg of fat in a year, and managed to grow some muscles. Besides that, working out really helps me to clear my mind, and gives me a good feeling when doing physical exercises.
Working at my home office
A while ago I blogged about working out of my home office one day a week. I can say, that this year was the first year I managed to go to an external work place one day week almost every week. I try to visit cool places in Rotterdam where I can work and have a good lunch which helps me to focus, meet new people and gain some productivity, which sometimes is a challenge while working at home with children running around.
Hiking
I still do long distance hikes once in a while, you can see my activities on Strava. My last long hike was from my home town to Amsterdam. Sadly I stranded at about 17km before the finish line. I will redo this one, as I really felt fit, except for the blister on my right foot.
Tech stuff
I have started to use Nextcloud (thread on Mastodon). First we are going to used is as backup for our photos and videos from our phones. And slightly move out of using Google Drive, email and calendar.
Own Mastodon instance
I read a lot about starting your own instance, and all work that comes with it. I registered a nice domain name, fired up a VPS, installed all software and there it was, toot.re. After a first toot, yes that’s what a post on Mastodon is called, I got a two people I trust on board as co-admins. Luc Princen en Jos Klever.
Developed a ‘Remind me’ bot for Mastodon
I have developed a Remind me bot for Mastodon. It has its own account on toot.re and will schedule a reminder for you if you mention it with a relative time like in ten minutes, next year. I built it in PHP and it’s running on my Synology NAS. You can see the code here on GitHub, I’m happy to receive feedback.
Best wishes
I want to wish everyone a healthy, fun, exciting, loving and happy 2023. 🍾
Cover photo by Isabela Kronemberger
