2022 was quite the year. Here’s a round-up of how it was for me.

I’m still building mechanical keyboards

I’ve now built 5 of them (and a numpad), here are some things I learned over time:

• I need arrow keys and cannot function without them (sorry 60% keyboard format).
• Related: I am too lazy for layers.
• A stand-alone numpad is just the thing for the one day a week I have to do reporting.
• My aversion to clicky keys has not lessened (Amos loves them for some reason so I keep some in a board to entertain him).
• I really like having a volume control knob on my keyboard. Am I shallow? Possibly!
• 5 keyboards is probably 3 too many.

Will that stop me from building more? Probably not, but I’d prefer to just build them for friends because the tiny apartment of chaos really does not need any more things cluttering it.

I <3 my cats

The kittens of helping have grown into the cats of napping and Zoom-call bombing.

One of them (Smudge) still tries to help me with work, but is a little over-zealous, and infamous in a partner company as a result. Yes, I had to send an email that more or less said “My cat sat on my keyboard and did x, y, z with his fluffy butt, how fix pls?” He also loves collaborative Miro boards because there are many cursors to chase.

His brother (Amos) was diagnosed with a chronic heart problem this year. My big-hearted boy literally has seriously overgrown heart muscle. Which explains his lethargy – although he will still get excited about his murdersticks (feather wands), I just have to make sure he doesn’t over-exert himself. We now have a daily “sneak meds into food” routine that sometimes works and sometimes fails. I also count his breaths every day while he’s sleeping so I can notice if his heart-rate increases. So far, so good.

I have a new job!

Still with the same company, just in a different org. Years ago, I accidentally became involved in a project at work (partly because of my linguistics degree, partly because I was already involved with a specific product). That was supposed to be a short-term, one and done, thing. But it turned out not to be. I kept working on the project through multiple incarnations and changes, until my grand-boss called a halt to my involvement. In fairness to her, she did that because a new organization was set up which that work would more naturally fall under, and she wanted me to be able to focus completely on my actual job.

A few months later, there was a request from that new org to temporarily borrow me full-time (it’s called a secondment where I work, but usually happens within the same org). Both my manager and my grand-boss were supportive of me helping out on a more formal basis, because they are lovely people. After 6 months doing that work, there was a request to extend my secondment. A couple of months into the extension I was asked if I’d like to stay on permanently, and I said “Yes, please!” So I’m no longer writing all day, every day at work, but I do have the same (great) manager I had from 2015-2020 and I also have a new team as lovely as the one I left. I’m learning a lot, and getting to meet a lot of new people and teams across the company. I’m also keeping in touch with my old team because they’re all wonderful humans and I like them a lot.

My idiot leg

Content warning for medical stuff and injury mention

This was the suckiest thing about 2022, and of course it is carrying into 2023.

In 2021 I noticed that a scratch on my shin wasn’t healing. So I went to the doc and got sent to the dermatology department of the local hospital. They did a biopsy in January 2022, and the site of the biopsy immediately became infected (it’s called cellulitis), and took months to heal. It did heal though! Then, at a follow-up appointment, they noticed that a mole on the same shin looked weird. They decided to remove it. Thankfully, it turned out that it looked weird because the skin under it was discolored and there wasn’t anything to worry about.

I had about a month where it looked like things were healing well, and then my shin started feeling hot and itchy and looking weird. Turns out it had ulcerated (every bit as gross as that sounds) and was infected again. Yay? Apparently, if you have cellulitis once, you are very likely to get it again.

So I spent all of December on antibiotics and spent December 23 in A&E being pumped full of more of them. My Christmas trip home had to be cancelled, and as of now it’s looking like I should also have cancelled a trip to London I had planned to celebrate my 50th birthday this month. Even if the infection eases off, I don’t think I would have the energy to spend 3 days wandering around at DragCon UK.

On the plus side, as part of all the tests and stuff they did, they sent me to a cardiologist and I learned that (a) I do have a heart and (b) it’s in great shape.

Tl;dr: I have the shins of an 80 year old. Cellulitis sucks. Also, compression socks are weird and uncomfortable.

I quit smoking

Content warning: smoking, vaping, blood pressure mention

I had been half-heartedly switching between smoking and vaping for years. I’ve even been mixing ejuice for myself and my friends since 2015, but for some reason I just couldn’t cut out cigarettes. In May 2022 I managed to. The effect on my blood pressure was almost instant, and once I saw those numbers go down while wearing a 24-hour monitor I knew I needed to stay well away from cigarettes. I know that sounds weird, but it’s one thing to be told a thing, and another to see it with your own eyes.

Since May, I’ve been gradually lowering the amount of nicotine in the juice I mix. I’ve gone from 12% to 5% and hopefully will manage to phase out nicotine completely over the next 18 months. My blood pressure medication has been reduced, I no longer have a hacking cough from hell every morning, and my hair and clothes do not smell of smoke anymore. I’ve also saved over 4 thousand Euros by not buying cigarettes. These are all good things, I think!

Here’s to 2023!

I hope it’s a year filled with love, kindness, good health, laughter, and fun for all of us!