Posting in a space I control isn’t just about the principle anymore. It’s a kind of self-preservation. I want to preserve my attention and my autonomy. I accept that I’m addicted, and I would like to curb that addiction. We all only have so much time to spend; we only have one face to maintain ownership of. Independence is the most productive, least invasive way forward.
I try to get back to Ireland a few times a year to see my mother. At some point in each trip there’s a social gathering with her friends or family. Inevitably the talk turns to ailments, illnesses, and complaints. I sit there quietly and nod politely.
2023 was the year I joined in.
If it wasn’t relaying my experience of visits to the emergency room, it was talk of my sinuses acting up and keeping me awake at night with their noises. Nasal polyps perhaps? And lately I’ve been having this wheezy asthma-like issue at night, what with this chesty cough I’ve been trying to sha… you get how uninteresting this is, right?
So I’ve got some nagging health issues. But I consider myself lucky. In the grand scheme of things, they aren’t big deals. Even the allergy which requires me to carry an epi-pen is to the easily-avoidable Ibuprofun, not to some ubiquitous foodstuff.
In fact I’ve had just enough health issues to give me a nice dose of perspective and appreciate all the times when my body is functioning correctly. I often think of what Maciej wrote about perspective:
The good news is, as you get older, you gain perspective. Perspective helps alleviate burnout.
The bad news is, you gain perspective by having incredibly shitty things happen to you and the people you love. Nature has made it so that perspective is only delivered in bulk quantities. A railcar of perspective arrives and dumps itself on your lawn when all you needed was a microgram. This is a grossly inefficient aspect of the human condition, but I’m sure bright minds in Silicon Valley are working on a fix.
Hence my feeling fortunate. 2023 was a perfectly grand year for me.
I went on some great adventures with Jessica. In the middle of the year we crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary II with our friends Dan and Sue, then we explored New York, and then we relaxed on Saint Augustine Beach for a week. Lovely!
The week in Ortigia, Sicily was great. So was the week in Cáceres, Spain. And the week spent playing music in Belfast during the trad festival was a blast.
There was lots of music closer to home too. Brighton is blessed with plenty of Irish music sessions and I’m doing my best to get to all of them. Playing mandolin in a session is my happy place.
Other music is also available. The band had an excellent year with the addition of our brilliant drummer, Matthew. We made such fast progress on new material that we managed to get into the studio to record an album’s worth of songs. Expect a new Salter Cane album in 2024!
On the work front, my highlights were event-based. I curated and hosted UX London. I spoke at a bunch of other events, and I think I did a good job. I spoke at no online events, and that’s the way I’d like to keep it. I thrive on giving talks at in-person gatherings. I hope I can continue to do that in 2024.
I very much enjoyed having a four-day work week in 2023. I don’t think I could ever go back to a five-day week. In fact, for 2024 I’m dabbling with a three-day work week. I’m luckily I can afford to do this. Given the choice, I’d rather have more time than more money. I know not everyone has that choice.
My hope for 2024 is for pretty much more of the same as I got in 2023. More music. More travel. But fewer health issues.
When I was summarising 2022, I said:
I’ve got my health. That’s something I don’t take for granted.
I’ve still (mostly) got my health. I definitely don’t take it for granted. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2024.
It all started with a trip into the countryside one Sunday a few weeks back.
The weather has been getting better and better. The countryside was calling. Meanwhile, Jessica was getting worried about her newly-acquired driving skills getting rusty. She has her license, but doesn’t get the chance to drive very often. She signed up to a car club that lets her book a hybrid car for a few hours at a time—just enough to keep in practice, and also just enough for a little jaunt into the countryside.
We went for Sunday lunch at the Shepherd and Dog in Fulking, near to Devil’s Dyke (I swear that sentence makes sense if you live ’round these parts). It was a lovely day. The Sunday roast was good. But it was on the way back that things started to go wrong.
We had noticed that one of the front tyres was looking a little flat so we planned to stop into a garage to get that seen to. We never made it that far. The tell-tale rhythmic sounds of rubber flapping around told us that we now had a completely flat tyre. Cue panic.
Fortunately we weren’t too far from a layby. We pulled in on the side of the busy road that runs by Saddlescombe Farm.
This is when the Kafkaesque portion of the day began. Jessica had to call the car club, but reception was spotty to put it mildly. There was much frustration, repitition, and hold music.
Eventually it was sorted out enough that we were told to wait for someone from the AA who’d come by and change the tyre in a few hours. To be fair, there are worse places to be stuck on a sunny Summer’s day. We locked the car and walked off across the rolling hills to pass the time.
The guy from the AA actually showed up earlier than expected. We hurried back and then sat and watched as he did his mechanical mending. We got the all-clear to drive the car back to Brighton, as long we didn’t exceed 50 miles per hour.
By the time we got home, we were beat. What a day! I could feel the beginnings of a headache so I popped some ibuprofin to stave it off. Neither of us could be bothered cooking, so we opted for a lazy evening in front of the telly eating takeaway.
I went onto Deliveroo and realised I couldn’t even manage the cognitive overhead of deciding what to eat. So I just went to my last order—a nice mix of Chinese food—and clicked on the option to place exactly the same order again.
And so we spent our Sunday evening munching on Singapore fried noodles and catching up on the most excellent Aussie comedy series, Colin From Accounts. It was just what I needed after an eventful day.
I had just finished my last bite when I felt I needed to cough. That kicked off some wheezing. That was a bit weird. So was the itchy sensation in my ears. Like, the insides of my ears were itchy. Come to think of it, my back was feeling really itchy too.
The wheeziness was getting worse. I had been trying to pass it off, responding to Jessica’s increasingly worried questions with “I’m grand, I’ll be f…” Sorry, had to cough. Trying to clear my throat. It feels a bit constricted.
When Jessica asked if she should call 111, I nodded. Talking took a bit of effort.
Jessica described my symptoms over the phone. Then the operator asked to speak to me. I answered the same questions, but in a much wheezier way.
An ambulance was on its way. But if the symptoms got worse, we should call 999.
The symptoms got worse. Jessica called 999. The ambulance arrived within minues.
The two paramedics, Alastair and Lucy, set to work diagnosing the problem. Let’s go into the ambulance, they said. They strapped a nebuliser onto my face which made breathing easier. It also made everything I said sound like a pronouncement from Bane.
They were pretty sure it was anaphylaxis. I’ve never been allergic to anything in my life, but clearly I was reacting to something. Was it something in the Chinese food? Something in the countryside?
In any case, they gave me a jab of antihistamine into my arm and took us to the emergency room.
By the time we got there, I was feeling much better. But they still needed to keep me under observation. So Jessica and I spent a few hours sitting in the hallway. Someone came by every now and then to check on me and offer us some very welcome cups of tea.
Once it was clear that I was fully recovered, I was discharged with a prescription for an EpiPen.
I picked up the prescription the next day. Having an EpiPen filled with adrenaline was reassuring but it was disconcerting not knowing what caused my anaphylactic reaction in the first place.
After that stressful weekend, life went back to normal, but with this cloud of uncertainty hovering above. Was that it? Would it happen again? Why did it happen?
The weather stayed nice all week. By the time the next weekend rolled around, I planned to spend it doing absolutely nothing. That was just as well, because when I woke up on Saturday morning, I had somehow managed to twist something in my shoulder. I guess I’m at that age now where I can injure myself in my sleep.
I took some neproxin, which helped. After a while, the pain was gone completely.
Jessica and I strolled to the park and had brunch in a nice local café. Then we strolled home and sat out in the garden, enjoying the sunshine.
I was sitting there reading my book when I noticed it. The insides of my ears. They were getting itchy. I swallowed nervously. Was it my imagination or did that swallowing sensation feel slightly constricted. And is that a wheeze I hear?
It was happening again.
The symptoms continued to get worse. Alright, it was time to use that EpiPen. I had read the instructions carefully so I knew just what to do. I did the EpiPen mambo: hold, jab, press.
It worked. We called 999 (as instructed) and were told to go the emergency room. This time we went by taxi.
I checked in, and then sat in the waiting room. I noticed that everyone else had white wristbands, but mine was red. I guess my place in the triage was high priority.
As I sat there, I could feel some of those symptoms returning, but very slowly. By the time we saw someone, there was no mistaking it. The symptoms were coming back.
I was hooked up to the usual instruments—blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygen—while the hospital staff conferred about what to do. I was getting a bit clammy. I started to feel a bit out of it.
Beep, beep! One of those numbers—blood oxygen?—had gone below a safe threshold. I saw the staff go into action mode. Someone hit a button—the red light in the ceiling started flashing. Staff who had been dealing with other patients came to me.
Instructions were spoken clearly and efficiently, then repeated back with equal clarity and efficiency. “Adrenaline. One in ten thousand.” “Adrenaline. One in ten thousand.” They reclined my chair, elevated my legs, pulled down my trousers, and gave me my second shot in one day.
It worked. I started to feel much better straight away. But once again, I needed to be kept under observation. I was moved to the “recus” ward, passing through the corridor that was so familiar from the previous weekend.
This time we’d spend a grand total of twelve hours in the hospital. Once again, it was mercifully uneventful. But it gave us the opportunity to put two and two together. What was the common thread between both episodes?
Ibuprofin. Neproxin. They’re both non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS). That fits
Foods are the most common trigger in children and young adults, while medications and insect bites and stings are more common in older adults. … Any medication may potentially trigger anaphylaxis. The most common are β-lactam antibiotics (such as penicillin) followed by aspirin and NSAIDs.
The doctors agreed—the connection looked pretty clear. I saw my GP a few days later and she’s reffered me to an allergy-testing clinic to confirm it. That might take a while though. In the meantime, I also got another prescription for more EpiPens.
Hopefully I won’t need them. I’m very, very glad that I don’t appear to be allergic to a foodstuff. I’d rather do without ibuprofin and aspirin than have to vigilantly monitor my diet.
But I do need to get into the habit of making sure I’ve got at least one EpiPen with me wherever I go. I’ll probably never need to use it. I feel like I’ve had enough anaphylaxis in the past couple of weeks to last me a lifetime.
Oh, and one more thing. I know everyone says this after dealing with some kind of health emergency in this country, but I’m going to say it anyway:
The NHS is easily the best thing ever invented in the UK. Everyone I dealt with was fantastic. It was all in a day’s work for them, but I am forever in their debt (whereas had this happened in, say, the USA, I would forever be in a much more literal debt).
Thank you, NHS!
This time last year when I was looking back on 2021, I wrote:
2020 was the year of the virus. 2021 was the year of the vaccine …and the virus, obviously, but still it felt like the year we fought back. With science!
Science continued to win the battle in 2022. But it was messy. The Situation isn’t over yet, and everyone has different ideas about the correct levels of risk-taking.
It’s like when you’re driving and you think that everyone going faster than you is a maniac, and everyone going slower than you is an idiot.
The world opened up more in 2022. I was able to speak at more in-person events. I really missed that. I think I’m done with doing online talks.
There was a moment when I was speaking at Web Dev Conf in Bristol this year (a really nice little gathering), and during my presentation I was getting that response from the audience that you just don’t get with online talks, and I distinctly remember thinking, “Oh, I’ve really missed this!”
But like I said, The Situation isn’t over, and that makes things tricky for conferences. Most of the ones I spoke at or attended were doing their best to make things safe. CSS Day, Clarity, State Of The Browser: they all took measures to try to look out for everyone’s health.
For my part, I asked everyone attending dConstruct to take a COVID test the day before. Like I said at the time, I may have just been fooling myself with what might have been hygiene theatre, but like those other events, we all wanted to gather safely.
That can’t be said for the gigantic event in Berlin that I spoke at in Summer. There were tens of thousands of people in the venue. Inevitably, I—and others—caught COVID.
My bout of the ’rona wasn’t too bad, and I’m very glad that I didn’t pass it on to any family members (that’s been my biggest worry throughout The Situation). But it did mean that I wasn’t able to host UX London 2022.
That was a real downer. I spent much of 2022 focused on event curation: first UX London, and then dConstruct. I was really, really proud of the line-up I assembled for UX London so I was gutted not to be able to introduce those fabulous speakers in person.
Still, I got to host dConstruct, Leading Design, and Clarity, so 2022 was very much a bumper year for MCing—something I really, really enjoy.
Already I’ve got more of the same lined up for the first half of 2023: hosting Leading Design San Francisco in February and curating and hosting UX London in June.
I hope to do more speaking too. Alas, An Event Apart is no more, which is a real shame. But I hope there are other conferences out there that might be interested in what I have to say. If you’re organising one, get in touch.
Needless to say, 2022 was not a good year for world events. The callous and cruel invasion of Ukraine rightly dominated the news (sporting events and dead monarchs are not the defining events of the year). But even in the face of this evil, there’s cause for hope, seeing the galvanised response of the international community in standing up to Putin the bully.
In terms of more personal bad news, Jamie’s death is hard to bear.
I got to play lots of music in 2022. That’s something I definitely want to continue. In fact, 2023 kicked off with a great kitchen session yesterday evening—the perfect start to the year!
And I’ve got my health. That’s something I don’t take for granted.
One year ago, I wrote:
Maybe 2022 will turn out to be similar—shitty for a lot of people, and mostly unenventful for me. Or perhaps 2022 will be a year filled with joyful in-person activities, like conferences and musical gatherings. Either way, I’m ready.
For the most part, that played out. 2022 was thankfully fairly uneventful personally. And it was indeed a good year for in-person connections. I very much hope that continues in 2023.
A look at back at what wasn’t in the headlines this year.
The design process in action in Victorian England:
Recognizing that few people actually read statistical tables, Nightingale and her team designed graphics to attract attention and engage readers in ways that other media could not. Their diagram designs evolved over two batches of publications, giving them opportunities to react to the efforts of other parties also jockeying for influence. These competitors buried stuffy graphic analysis inside thick books. In contrast, Nightingale packaged her charts in attractive slim folios, integrating diagrams with witty prose. Her charts were accessible and punchy. Instead of building complex arguments that required heavy work from the audience, she focused her narrative lens on specific claims. It was more than data visualization—it was data storytelling.
I no longer have Covid. I am released from isolation.
Alas, my negative diagnosis came too late for me to make it to UX London. But that’s okay—by the third and final day of the event, everything was running smooth like buttah! Had I shown up, I would’ve just got in the way. The Clearleft crew ran the event like a well-oiled machine.
I am in the coronaclear just in time to go away for a week. My original thinking was this would be my post-UX-London break to rest up for a while, but it turns out I’ve been getting plenty of rest during UX London.
I’m heading to the west coast of Ireland for The Willie Clancy Summer School, a trad music pilgrimage.
Jessica and I last went to Willie Week in 2019. We had a great time and I distinctly remember thinking “I’m definitely coming back next year!”
Well, a global pandemic put paid to that. The event ran online for the past two years. But now that it’s back for real, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
My mandolin and I are bound for Miltown Malbay!
That event in Berlin last week was by far the largest gathering of humans I’ve been with in over two years. If I was going to finally succumb to the ’rona, this was likely to be the place and time.
Sure enough, on my last day in Berlin I had a bit of a scratchy throat. I remained masked for the rest of the day for the travel back to England. Once I was back home I immediately tested and …nothing.
I guess it was just a regular sore throat after all.
Over the weekend the sore throat was accompanied by some sniffles. Just your typical cold symptoms. But I decided to be prudent and test again yesterday.
This time a very clear result was revealed. It was Covid-19 after all.
Today I was supposed to be travelling to Lille on the Eurostar to speak at a private event. Instead I’m isolating at home. My symptoms are quite mild. I feel worse about letting down the event organisers.
Still, better to finally get the novel coronavirus now rather than later in the month. I would hate to miss UX London. But I’m confident I’ll be recovered and testing negative by then.
For now I’ll be taking it easy and letting those magnificent vaccines do their work.
There was a week recently where I was out and about nearly every night.
One night, Jessica and I went to the cinema. There was a double bill of Alien and Aliens in the beautiful Duke of York’s picture house. We booked one of the comfy sofas on the balcony.
The next night we were out at the session in The Jolly Brewer, playing trad Irish tunes all evening. Bliss!
Then on the third night, we went to see Low playing in a church. Rich and Ben were there too.
It really felt like The Before Times. Of course in reality it wasn’t quite like old times. There’s always an awareness of relative risk. How crowded is the cinema likely to be? Will they have the doors open at The Jolly Brewer to improve the airflow? Will people at the Low gig comply with the band’s request to wear masks?
Still, in each case, I weighed the risk and decided the evening was worth it. If I caught Covid because of that cinematic double bill, or that tune-filled gathering, or that excellent gig, that price would be acceptable.
Mind you, I say that without having experienced the horribleness of having a nasty bout of coronavirus. And the prospect of long Covid is genuinely scary.
But there’s no doubt that the vaccines have changed the equation. There’s still plenty of risk but it’s on a different scale. The Situation isn’t over, but it has ratcheted down a notch to something more manageable.
Now with the weather starting to get nice, there’ll be more opportunities for safer outdoor gatherings. I’m here for it.
Actually, I’m not going to literally be here for all of it. I’m making travel plans to go and speak at European events—another positive signal of the changing situation. Soon I’ll be boarding the Eurostar to head to Amsterdam, and not long after I’ll be on the Eurostar again for a trip to Lille. And then of course there’s UX London at the end of June. With each gathering, there’s an inevitable sense of calculated risk, but there’s also a welcome sense of normality seeping back in.
February is a tough month at the best of times. A February during The Situation is particularly grim.
At least in December you get Christmas, whose vibes can even carry you through most of January. But by the time February rolls around, it’s all grim winteriness with no respite in sight.
In the middle of February, Jessica caught the ’rona. On the bright side, this wasn’t the worst timing: if this had happened in December, our Christmas travel plans to visit family would’ve been ruined. On the not-so-bright side, catching a novel coronavirus is no fun.
Still, the vaccines did their job. Jessica felt pretty crap for a couple of days but was on the road to recovery before too long.
Amazingly, I did not catch the ’rona. We slept in separate rooms, but still, we were spending most of our days together in the same small flat. Given the virulence of The Omicron Variant, I’m counting my blessings.
But just in case I got any ideas about having some kind of superhuman immune system, right after Jessica had COVID-19, I proceeded to get gastroenteritis. I’ll spare you the details, but let me just say it was not pretty.
Amazingly, Jessica did not catch it. I guess two years of practicing intense hand-washing pays off when a stomach bug comes a-calling.
So all in all, not a great February, even by February’s already low standards.
The one bright spot that I get to enjoy every February is my birthday, just as the month is finishing up. Last year I spent my birthday—the big five oh—in lockdown. But two years ago, right before the world shut down, I had a lovely birthday weekend in Galway. This year, as The Situation began to unwind and de-escalate, I thought it would be good to reprieve that birthday trip.
We went to Galway. We ate wonderful food at Aniar. We listened to some great trad music. We drink some pints. It was good.
But it was hard to enjoy the trip knowing what was happening elsewhere in Europe. I’d blame February for being a bastard again, but in this case the bastard is clearly Vladimar Putin. Fucker.
Just as it’s hard to switch off for a birthday break, it’s equally challenging to go back to work and continue as usual. It feels very strange to be spending the days working on stuff that clearly, in the grand scheme of things, is utterly trivial.
I take some consolation in the fact that everyone else feels this way too, and everyone is united in solidarity with Ukraine. (There are some people in my social media timelines who also feel the need to point out that other countries have been invaded and bombed too. I know it’s not their intention but there’s a strong “all lives matter” vibe to that kind of whataboutism. Hush.)
Anyway. February’s gone. It’s March. Things still feel very grim indeed. But perhaps, just perhaps, there’s a hint of Spring in the air. Winter will not last forever.
192 more stories of progress from 2021.
Some welcome perspective on healthcare, conservation, human rights, and energy.
2020 was the year of the virus. 2021 was the year of the vaccine …and the virus, obviously, but still it felt like the year we fought back. With science!
Whenever someone writes and shares one of these year-end retrospectives the result is, by its very nature, personal. These last two years are different though. We all still have our own personal perspectives, but we also all share a collective experience of The Ongoing Situation.
Like, I can point to three pivotal events in 2021 and I bet you could point to the same three for you:
So while on the one hand we’re entering 2022 in a depressingly similar way to how we entered 2021 with COVID-19 running rampant, on the other hand, the odds have changed. We can calculate risk. We’ve got more information. And most of all, we’ve got these fantastic vaccines.
I summed up last year in terms of all the things I didn’t do. I could do the same for 2021, but there’s only one important thing that didn’t happen—I didn’t catch a novel coronavirus.
It’s not like I didn’t take some risks. While I was mostly a homebody, I did make excursions to Zürich and Lisbon. One long weekend in London was particurly risky.
At the end of the year, right as The Omicron Variant was ramping up, Jessica and I travelled to Ireland to see my mother, and then travelled to the States to see her family. We managed to dodge the Covid bullets both times, for which I am extremely grateful. My greatest fear throughout The Situation hasn’t been so much about catching Covid myself, but passing it on to others. If I were to give it to a family member or someone more vulnerable than me, I don’t think I could forgive myself.
Now that we’ve seen our families (after a two-year break!), I’m feeling more sanguine about this next stage. I’ll be hunkering down for the next while to ride out this wave, but if I still end up getting infected, at least I won’t have any travel plans to cancel.
But this is meant to be a look back at the year that’s just finished, not a battle plan for 2022.
There were some milestones in 2021:
This means that my websites are 2/5ths of my own age. In ten years time, my websites will be 1/2 of my own age.
Most of my work activities were necessarily online, though I did manage the aforementioned trips to Switzerland and Portugal to speak at honest-to-goodness real live in-person events. The major projects were:
Outside of work, my highlights of 2021 mostly involved getting to play music with other people—something that didn’t happen much in 2020. Band practice with Salter Cane resumed in late 2021, as did some Irish music sessions. Both are now under an Omicron hiatus but this too shall pass.
Another 2021 highlight was a visit by Tantek in the summer. He was willing to undergo quarantine to get to Brighton, which I really appreciate. It was lovely hanging out with him, even if all our social activities were by necessity outdoors.
But, like I said, the main achievement in 2021 was not catching COVID-19, and more importantly, not passing it on to anyone else. Time will tell whether or not that winning streak will be sustainable in 2022. But at least I feel somewhat prepared for it now, thanks to those magnificent vaccines.
2021 was a shitty year for a lot of people. I feel fortunate that for me, it was merely uneventful. If my only complaint is that I didn’t get to travel and speak as much I’d like, well boo-fucking-hoo, I’ll take it. I’ve got my health. My family members have their health. I don’t take that for granted.
Maybe 2022 will turn out to be similar—shitty for a lot of people, and mostly unenventful for me. Or perhaps 2022 will be a year filled with joyful in-person activities, like conferences and musical gatherings. Either way, I’m ready.
It me.
And yet now, in this moment of semi-stillness, the pause button may have slowed down our geographical dashing, but it has only accelerated our inner flounder. The dull thrum of imprecise apprehension. The gratitude for semi-safety made weird by the ever-blooming realisation that there is little to get excited about.
I keep coming back to this remarkable piece of writing by Cassie. Honest, resonant, and open, centred around a perfect analogy.
This is for everyone at Clearleft, but I’m sharing it here for you too.
There is a huge world out there where design isn’t embraced, where designers are clawing for resources, and where design isn’t prioritized. Most of the organizations that are changing your world don’t know much about design, aren’t looking for designers, and won’t even understand what designers are talking about when they show up at the front door.
Since 2010
- The developed world used less water, despite population growth
- The (whole) world became less transphobic than it once was
- The ozone layer started healing
- Investment in green energy far, far exceeded investment in fossil fuels
- The world got greener
- Homicide rates fell worldwide
- Weather forecasting became a lot more accurate
- The number of people without electricity fell below one billion
- Universal health care went from privileged ideal to global ambition
The goal in putting these stories together has never been to create a warm glow, or lull anyone into a false sense of complacency. The challenges facing the human family right now are big and scary and there’s no guarantee we will overcome them.
As millions of people have demonstrated in the past 12 months though, action is possible, better solutions are available and a better future can be built.
It’s been an absolute pleasure having Holly, Laçin, and Beyza at Clearleft while they’ve been working on this three-month internship project:
Self Treat is a vision piece designed to increase self-management of minor health conditions.
You can also read the blog posts they wrote during the process: