Yesterday I received an email from a reader asking ‘Are you ok?’.

It’s been nearly 8 months since the last time I wrote here. In that last post I celebrated blogging on this website for 15 years with some consistency, so perhaps it’s a bit ironic for that to be immediately followed by complete silence.

The last big gap in blogging for me was in 2017, the year I joined Yelp. This experience was so depressing, every day I was done work I had no creative energy left for anything else.

2021 was a bit different though. 2 years back I started a software development agency, which grew from 2 to 5 people in the last year. The stakes have increased quite a bit, and it’s taken up a lot of my emotional reserves.

I’ve also made the mistake of not taking any vacation all year. There was just not much gas left in the tank. This is so stupid. Less time off doesn’t result in more productivity. I know this, but the last 2 years there’s been little travel or activities due to lockdowns and restrictions. Every day looks the same and it kind of just flew by.

Over the last holidays I’ve taken an actual break though, and have since started several new projects and buzzing with new ideas. I’m still motivated to work on Curveball and Ketting (we use it every day for almost every customer!), and I’ve also started a series of live streams in which I build a Time Tracking application with Hypermedia on twitch.tv/evrt3.

If this sounds interesting, the first few episodes are up on my youtube channel, but I’ll share more on this blog later.

I’m also preparing for a tech talk on January 19th for Toronto JS. It’s online and free!

So am I ok? I think I am? This year is off to a good start. I just have to make sure I don’t forget to take it easy.

Happy stupid new year! I hope it sucks less!