2023 - A year in review
2023 has been an interesting year for me. I wanted to focus on maintaining the various gardens of my life, such as app development, physical health, and mental/social/emotional health. I feel that I’ve done a decent job overall, though some areas could’ve better improved.
2023 has been an interesting year for me. I wanted to focus on maintaining the various gardens of my life, such as app development, physical health, and mental/social/emotional health. I feel that I’ve done a decent job overall, though some areas could’ve better improved.
The worlds of the Fediverse garden are many
Fedigardens has been a year-long experiment by now, discovering and trying out ideas to make a more humane social media experience. The first half of the year was strong, as I worked to add features such as a frugal mode, blocked servers list, and more. However, it had fallen on the wayside in the later half of 2023, as I took on a major effort to refactor the project such that I could test things more reliably with guaranteed states.
In and of itself, this isn’t a big deal; I had a roadmap to move everything over to the new architecture, and it was going well. Despite this, I began to realize that my relationship with the Fediverse (and social media as a whole) began to deteriorate. Opening Mastodon up felt like a chore at times, and I often felt I was swimming in an ocean of negativity, far greater than I can reasonably handle and process. Being a part of the Fediverse isn’t as fun as it used to be for me. The reality is that the world just sucks right now, and no Mastodon client can ever fix that, even if it tried.
I hope that I can continue to develop Fedigardens, but I think I need to better establish my relationship with the Fediverse and get some help with developing the app as it grows.
A fully indexed heart
While Fedigardens has been on the rocks, development of Indexing Your Heart has been rock solid. In July, I took on an effort to refactor the game to use the Godot engine (again), using Miguel de Icaza’s SwiftGodot library. This later developed into a prototype that feels substantial compared to the last build in May. I’m excited to keep developing the game thanks to the new direction I’m taking with it.
I’ve mentioned a lot on this in a blog post on the project’s website already, and I recommend reading it over there.
The other gardens
In other areas, I feel that I have lacked a little on my own health gardens. While I moved to Delaware and am staying with close friends and participate in more activities online, my emotional garden hasn’t flourished as much as I hoped. As aforementioned, my relationship with the Fediverse hasn’t helped, either. I hope tending to this garden will allow me to reap the rewards later, but it seems that I’m in for the long haul.
My physical garden seems to be okay, even though I’m not as active. I’m still being cautious around COVID, wearing masks and getting booster shots when I can. Likewise, I have been walking a bit more thanks to countless trips to the grocery store and other places. I do feel that I can continue to improve on these fronts, but I appreciate that it hasn’t gotten worse.
Overall, it seems this year’s goals have been met to some degree, and I look forward to see what 2024 brings.
