That was a tough year, no doubt. In January, I was happy and planned our summer adventure. We wanted to hike the Everest base camp trail. And in February, I cried between phone calls, helping refugees cross the border and find transport or accommodation.

It's unbelievably dumb. Every time I think about it, it does not make any sense. No gain can justify so much death, destruction, and suffering. And the worst thing is that there is no end to this madness.

At some point, my wife and I agreed that we needed to disconnect because it was overwhelming. We went on a two-week hike, which turned out to be the best vacation we ever had. You can read about it here: We crossed the Alps.

Job-wise, there are no significant changes. I've done a ton of technical interviews. And I got much better at helping candidates navigate through the task. Oh, I got an email saying management put me on the top performer's list. It looks like I am doing a good job.

I was not as active as I wanted to be in the open-source side of building software thing. Those are the pull requests I closed:

And those are the books I read this year:

I hope that next year will be more productive.

At some point, I wanted to draw a cat. And you know, cats are hard to draw. I also spent some time making noises, but not enough to publish it somewhere. Maybe next year.

Yeah, life is so unpredictable. If in January, someone told me that instead of everything I wanted to happen, Russia would invade Ukraine, then we would cross the Alps and finish the year next to the castle of Fosdinovo, I would be surprised. And that looks like a lesson that there is no reason to plan something big. Which I refuse to learn.

See you next year.