Things that went right in 2023

It’s 28th December 2023, and having made the pilgrimage home for Christmas, I’m sat on my own in my parent’s living room with their two dogs. It’s wet, cold and miserable outside, and there’s not much to do. Whilst I’m sat here, with my brain wandering, I got to thinking… this year has been pretty alright!

More than alright, actually. Pretty great, all things considered.

I’m not just talking about progress against my goals for the year. Lots of things went right that were not part of the pre-defined plan.

In roughly order of their happening, this year I:

1. had numerous, lovingly cooked meals and bottles of wine with Emma
2. met Matt
3. worked with my mentee to help them start applying for roles
4. saw Sophie Okonedo perform a much more traumatic play than I had realised
5. bossed an escape room
6. overdosed on caffeine at the London Coffee Festival
7. went to a seance with Séaoncyé¹
8. went to my third live Eurovision; the first (and hopefully not the last) on UK soil
9. visited Malta and realised how tiny places can be
10. took Matt to his first Michelin Star restaurant
11. went to the BBC Proms
12. led the Civil Service group at Pride in London
13. paid off my student loans
14. got my first PlayStation Platinum trophy, quickly followed by two more
15. celebrated 10 years as a civil servant
16. became a service owner for a government digital service for the first time, and successfully steered the service into private beta
17. got some other, pretty huge work over the line that I can’t really go into the details of here
18. had a transcendent evening at Alexandra Palace, at a Jessie Ware gig
19. got pretty good at Elden Ring
20. visited my friends Rob and Lizzie in Dublin
21. created a Stoutie

And those are just the things I can remember. Maybe I should keep track of this kind of stuff more often…