I’m not a good “retro” person. I always want to move on to the next thing. But reflecting over the past achievements is a good habit, so let’s do it.

This year was very different from last year. I did not bike a single kilometer, which feels super bad, and if I have one personal goal for 2024, it’s getting back on the bike again. That said, we did rent a car to find hiking trails and hiked quite a bit during the summer. So not all is lost.

I also built many more Lego sets, so many in fact that this is getting a space concern. That said, they help me to keep my nerves down.

I started reading Dan Moren’s All Souls Lost book. (It came too late for the summer holidays, and I haven’t gotten into the habit of reading over Christmas.)

TV is still one of my main hobbies, and there is so much good stuff. Not only got four Doctor Who specials released, which are all excellent. (BBC/Disney+) I did enjoy the continuations of For All Mankind, Foundation, and Slow Horses. Shrinking is extremely well-made, too (all Apple TV+). Loki Season 2 was exquisite, while Secret Invasion existed. I enjoyed watching through Star Wars Rebels and then Ahsoka (all Disney+). Good Omens continued in a surprising and fun and tragic way (Amazon Prime). So much good TV.

Formula E season 9 was spectacular, and I cannot underline enough how much fun that series is. The behind-the-scenes dramatization of the season (Aka FE’s Drive to Survive) called Formula E: Unplugged will be published on January 2, with the first race of the season on January 13.

I also fell into a Home Assistant rabbit hole. After running a Homebridge for several years, this is a huge upgrade and wow can smart home stuff be easy and powerful. Having everything in one app that can be highly customized is empowering.

This blog and beyond

Including this post and with three posts that I imported from my retiring microblog, I have published 16 blog posts. That’s not bad.

I also started to take my newsletter more serious and sent out four of them. I try to make them more personal but also look at the industry of accessibility, trying to improve it. In the last one, I wrote about my thoughts on the European Accessibility Act and how prepared we are to support all businesses who will need help.

I also created a bot in April that collects interesting links on the web regarding accessibility and then publishes them on Mastodon. You can follow @links@yatil.social or see the Raindrop.io collection. It even has an RSS feed!

What else?

The loss of community continues, I did not have one speaking engagement in 2023, which was my own decision due to the risks of travel during a pandemic. I also stopped teaching at FH Joanneum due to the requirement of teaching at least one day in-person, but also because the teaching days shifted to the autumn. There is too much work to do in autumn for that additional commitment.

Apart from that, work was great but stressful. I did a lot of strategic and coaching work. And I feel that I’m more effective doing this than doing audits. So this is something for 2024 Eric to figure out. Especially how to deliver work that meets my high expectations for myself while also not completely draining myself.

Of course, the world situations hang like a dark cloud over everything. A largely ignored health crisis, wars, right-wing extremism, the climate emergency. I hope we can finally address the issues head-on and come out on the other end. I’m not super optimistic, but I have hope.

That’s it. I wish you a great year 2024 personally, but also globally.