Member-only story
Looking back on 2019
I always do this toward the end of the year… I barely write anything during October and November, and then towards the end of December I start to reflect and write about the past 12 months of my scrappy life. More so for myself to realise what it is that actually happened than for anyone else to read this.
2019 was special.
There’s so much shit that we’re going through as a society, from climate change starting to cause real problems, to the horrific state of politics — the Donald and the Boris of it all, Brexit, the inability of the progressive left to deliver strong candidates in both the US and the UK, to just name a few things. All of that takes up so much headspace and doesn’t really help if you’re trying to not feel depressed all of the time.
But even amid all of that, I had a really good year.
When the year started, I had been living in Amsterdam for a good 2.5 years, and as far as I could tell I would be living in Amsterdam for at least another year or two. Change always seems to be happening faster than I expect it to, even when I’m usually the person pushing it.
My focus for the first half of the year was getting our company in Amsterdam in a place where it was no longer this small agency that took on any random development project that came our way, turning it into a real tech company with a…
