2022: A year

2022 has been the weirdest time warp of a year that I can remember. I have only just stopped defaulting to writing 2021 whenever I write the year, which surely means it feels like it's gone really quick. But then on the other hand things like our family trip to the Isle of Wight in April feels like years ago. Not sure exactly why it has both of those feelings, but it's definitely been a year.

There's been a whole heap of stuff going on this year, and I can't remember much that's been particularly negative, so that's handy. We've smashed out some adventures as a family, climbing our first mountains together and making use of Colin the campervan in the Isle of Wight, Wales, England and Scotland. Some of it was super cold, some was wet, but all of it made great memories.

Eleanor's become a proper little kid, with all the fun that comes with school friends and hobbies like trampolining taking her to 1st place in her first competition. She is massively testing boundaries this year, and that has been challenging for everyone involved, but we've got fingers crossed that that just means we'll have easier teenage years. That's likely, right? RIGHT?!

Professionally I've put out some work I've been proud of at Prestanda this year, especially a lot of foundation work in the past couple of months that should see us take another step forward in 2023 for Prestanda. Also had a lot of fun using our sponsorship of NOMAD Sim Racing as an excuse to test ideas and skills out on something that is important but not world-ending if it doesn't meet expectations. Things like our increasingly useful Discord bot, our automatic interactions with iRacing, and more recently the first Windows application I've written which helps with engineering work before events. Those activities for the team help to build skills and ideas for client work that happens, which benefits everyone.

Segueing into the team while we're on the subject, we've had a great year there too – went into more detail on that on the Prestanda NOMAD blog in our 2022 review, but suffice to say that personally I'm enjoying leading one of the big championships as we finish the year and I hope I can carry that on through the rest of the season.

2022 was also the first full calendar year that I've spent sober since whenever it was that I had my first drink, which obviously also included celebrating 1 year sober 🎉. Going through my 2nd Christmas without a drink really helped me to cement my sobriety internally, as it's becoming more and more a part of me rather than just something I'm doing and dealing with. New Years Eve is still a very strange feeling, because it's always been my favourite night of the year. I'm reminded of what Hayley said to me last year: it's only been that way because it's the one night of the year that everyone else was doing what I'd do on a Tuesday. I think I'll feel a bit 'left out' for a while on that night of the year, but it's worth it for all the other days and nights that are so positive.

So yea, a very strange year time wise, but a massively positive one overall. I didn't even mention the robot vacuum that we got today that will change our lives. Oh, damn.