A year in review: 2023
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No, that's not a typo. I'm writing my year-in-review post for 2023 in 2025. It's not like 2023 was terrible, but it was intense, and I needed some distance before I could write about it, and then I just forgot to do it. Before I can write about 2024, I have to do 2023 first. So, here we go:
Personal
We moved to Graz in late 2022, and after more than a year, we're still happy here. We love the flat and our lovely little garden. It's wonderful watching our daughter Hanni turn into a little human. :)
We traveled to Italy, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Greece, and the Netherlands.
The reason why 2023 was so intense was that my partner, Claudi, got pregnant again. When we went to the doctor, they told us there wasn't just one baby but two. It sounds cliche, but hearing that news made me feel a rollercoaster of emotions. It went from "Fuck, my life is over "to "OMG, that's so awesome! ".
All these thoughts became irrelevant quickly because the doctor told us that the babies shared a placenta and that we should see a specialist at the hospital. There they told us that that's not ideal but not a big issue.
There was another problem, though. The babies' umbilical cords were connected through a fine vein, and one baby transferred blood to the other. One baby had too much red blood cells, and the other not enough. The difference wasn't significant, but they told us it could change at any time and that they needed to monitor them closely. That's why we had to go to the hospital every week for six months. They also said that in case it gets worse, we would have to make a decision: Keep both babies and risk that they die or they're both born with a chronic illness or severe disability, or cut one baby's umbilical cord while it's still in the womb and save the other. I cried so much the following weeks and thinking about it makes me tear up again. Every week for 24 weeks, we went to the hospital and waited up to three hours for the doctors to tell us whether we would have to make that decision. That was tough. We tried to stay positive and be there for each other and Hanni. Everything else was secondary.
Fast forward to December, our two beautiful daughters, Olivia and Philippa, were born healthy. There were minor complications, but we were allowed to go home together after five days. Today, everything is fine. They are healthy, beautiful, funny, clever, adorable, wild,…just perfect. I'm the happiest man alive.
Work
2023 was my first year as a full-time freelancer after working almost exclusively for the City of Vienna for four years. 2023, I still worked for the City but had significantly fewer hours.
I did some auditing and online and in-person workshops. My favorite workshop was in Hamburg with PPI. The team was great, and I fell in love with the City. Overall, it was a great year financially and in terms of the type of projects I did.
Speaking
I gave a talk online at a conference of the German publication Rheinwerk Verlag, at the HHTML meetup in Hamburg, and CSS Day in Amsterdam. It was such an honor to get invited to speak at CSS Day. I kinda felt out of place because many of the other speakers were people I looked up to. The conference was excellent, I met many friends, and I had a great time with my family in Amsterdam.
Here's a recording of my talk:
Articles
I finished my #100DaysOfMoreOrLessModernCSS series, and I wrote many additional posts. 2023 was great in terms of blogging.
In January, I began writing my first book, the Web Accessibility Cookbook and finished most of it. A lot of time went into the book, but I enjoyed it. It was intense but also an experience I wouldn't want to miss.
As already mentioned, the year was intense but successful, both personally and profressionally. :)