Dénouement - 2023

As the final chapter of 2023 unfolded, I found myself pondering the practice of year-end reflections. Isn’t it curious that we often summarize our years before they’ve fully closed? Each remaining day still holds the potential for moments that could upend, redefine or recontextualize our entire year.

2023 was a mosaic of challenges and triumphs, marked by professional hurdles and personal milestones. It was a year marred by the loss of loved ones and riddled with the uncertainty of job security. Many companies faced waves and waves of layoffs, and mine was no different. Surviving the was bittersweet, as it meant bidding farewell to colleagues and friends. Supporting them in their transitions was a poignant reminder of the ever-changing nature of our professional lives.

2023 also marked my first encounter with COVID-19. Although my symptoms were mostly mild, it offered a glimpse into the struggles many have faced since the pandemic began. There were health challenges, including a bout of laryngitis that left me voiceless for weeks. I had some minor surgeries towards the end of the year too.

Experienced

• A trip to Norway graced me with the deepening of a friendship and with the ethereal beauty of the Northern Lights - not once, but thrice.
• The thrill of learning to skateboard brought a sense of freedom and youth.
• Reuniting with a friend in Milan was a reminder of the enduring nature of true friendships.
• My first Champions League games (both Women’s and Men’s) were electrifying, an unforgettable experience for any football fan.
• Saw more of Germany (Düsseldorf, Bremen, Munich, and Hamburg twice).
• Experienced many, many incredible concerts + a tremendous after party + one stinker of a show that caused me to leave early for the first time in my life.
• Saw The Bug, one of my favourite artists, thrice in a single year. Helsinki and Berlin (x2)!
• Had a product mentor for the first time 🥰
• Aja Monet’s powerful poetry, delivered in her soothing voice, was a balm for the soul.

Shipped

At OneFootball, my teams and I achieved significant milestones:

• A robust authentication and authorization service, laying the groundwork for secure user experiences.
• Integrating Women’s Football content from The Guardian, which expanded our coverage of the beautiful game.
• An improved ad waterfall
• An internal admin tool that eased the life of the incredible engineers
• A complete overhaul of the payment system architecture
• Content indexing configurability
• Content performance analytics dashboard
• Comprehensive tracing for different types of article and video ingestion (o11y) + head-based sampling
• Substantial cost savings with one of our CDNs
• Header bidding
• One of our key APIs in serverless architecture
• The foundations of a content authoring tool
• Multi-tenant continuous deployment

Learned

• How to handle continuous burnout and still be productive. This is not good, and I hope that no one is ever in this position.
• Enhancing my skills in coding, design, and analysis fostered better communication with my team and enriched my work on this site.
• That the extreme “left” is not synonymous with being progressive.
• That Manchester United would make for a fascinating documentary, and Harvard Business case study.
• Booking personal time off in my calendar became a vital self-care strategy.
• Designing for edge-cases is important, the obvious will take care of itself.
• Self-care is more important than relentless learning.
• Take the damn vacation time. I almost lost 18 or so days because of a) workaholism, b) wanting to protect my team, c) not enjoying the overwhelming amount of work whenever I missed even 2 days.

Made

• This site! 🥳

Read

I read far more than these, but these stood out:

• Batman: Curse of the White Knight
• Black Quantum Futurism, Vol. 1
• Kindred
• Tokyo Underworld

Played

I played far…you know what…you get it.

• Cyberpunk 2077 2.0
• Marvel’s Midnight Suns
• NORCO
• Spider-Man 2
• STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ II
• The Last of Us, Part II. But its portrayal of Black characters is a point of contention for me.

Listened

My eclectic taste led to a year filled with diverse musical explorations. You can delve into my listening habits through my Last.fm stats.

I am currently reviewing the Best of 2023 playlist (Apple Music & Spotify).

I am also sorting out some issues with Apple Music. It seems I discovered a server-side edge case that has completely broken the two-sync for libraries across different platforms (iOS, iPadOS, MacOS and the web experience). When Apple’s engineers have sorted it out, I’ll add it here.

Though the way things are going, it seems I might have to bid goodbye to my 23 year old digital music library. 😞

UPDATE: Bug sorted, and got all my music back! Please find the Best of 2023 playlist below:

Watched - Movies

• Anatomy of a Fall
• Godzilla Minus One
• Leave the World Behind
• Oppenheimer
• Past Lives
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
• Tár
• They Cloned Tyrone

Watched - TV Shows

• Foundation, S2
• Harley Quinn, S1 - still catching up!
• Ted Lasso, S3
• The Bear, S2
• The Last of Us, S1

2024+

I start a new job! I’m pretty damn excited!