Blog: Where baby steps will have turned into giant leaps when you look back at your progress

2021 what a year it has been! It was a weird rollercoaster (not talking about Corona here). Didn’t have much time and energy left for creating proper Hive posts. You’ll read in a moment why 😉

My rollercoaster went from building my own speakers to being selected (2nd round) for a plot of land to start investigating the option to build our own house. That last thing is still a work in progress, but things start to look positive. But still can’t shout it out yet… because prices are rising from materials so till all our permits are taken care of, we can’t order any materials. So still not sure if we can afford it at all.

That is all the DIY stuff, my health was also going up and down. The nodule I told you guys about last year did grow faster than they ever expected. So got a lot of check-ups on that one. Also still tests scheduled/re-scheduled etc. for being dizzy, and the palpitations. On the other hand, I can tell you I didn’t faint once last year. Now I’m counting towards 1,5 years of no fainting! The tips from the doctor to change some things in my diet last year worked out pretty well, I guess.

Speakers

Had an amazing year working together with my dad every now and then on the speakers. I can recommend it to everyone! My current house I started working with my hands for the first time of my life when I bought it 11 years ago. Being young and working with your hands is totally new then you’ll listen better to his advice while doing and trying things. Now we had some real nice discussions in the garden about how to solve an issue we encounter along the way. One time he was right and the next I was. While my mum was sitting inside observing us, she also really enjoyed our time together in a whole different way.

It was a bit of a struggle with the Covid situation and producing/delivering goods. Been waiting on standard PCB plates for the filters for a few months for example. Will try to make decent posts about the building process once they are finished. At the moment I’m working on the filter with all the electrical components to create the crossovers so I can send the correct signal to the unit that should play that part

House

After starting to build my own speakers, me and my girlfriend also did subscribe to a few plots of land. After searching a long time and did countless of house views she got tired of it and she mentioned why don’t we go for a new house construction project? I was a little bit shocked about that because she didn’t want that at first for many years. At 1 plot of land we got lucky people couldn’t build their dreamhouse with the regulations that the building inspectors asses for the external appearance. For now I can tell you we had issues ourselves as well during the whole process. But the last week of the year we got a OK we approve your house! So now we have to wait for permits and financial struggle and then it’s fingers crossed and waiting/hoping we can start building our dreamhouse. 🤞

Images from the project brochure

Photography

Had again a wonderful photography year I can tell! Even though I didn’t feel like to grab my camera the last months from the year. While writing this story today I did grab my camera for the first time this year to go out for a walk. It enjoyed the walk very much. It was a hazy day, so it was time to try a picture I already failed a few times. Well I succeeded I think!

2021 was a year where I could cross a few items from my list. A few pictures I wanted to create for a very long time. These possibilities were finally there yeah! Will show you some of them and I hope you like them as much as I do.

The windmill in the storm I already had a few years on my list, but you know windsurfing always calls first. But this year in March I noticed the weather predictions for the upcoming week and a stormfront was incoming with sunshine predictions woooaaaah! Checked the tides for that week and just around lunchbreak the tide would be high but shit lots of meetings that Thursday… But luckily, I could arrange a long lunchbreak by re-scheduling some meetings and the weather gods where with me. The sun was out, and the wind was howling. You know these moments when you took your shots (Ok I admit I took a little over 100 shots from the windmill) and you’re in the car heading back home. I couldn’t get the smile from my face knowing I got that one picture I wanted for already a long time!

Sometimes you’ll also have opportunities that you never experienced before and couldn’t dream of. I already mentioned last year our amazing winter period with snow and ice. That time I discovered even salt water could be frozen and one of my prettiest pictures from the year I took during a very cold morning but wow just wow, what an incredible feeling to crawl over a frozen ocean!

During the summer I went out for a sunset, but I was at the wrong place, with a huge cloud in front of the sun. But it turned out to be a great spot for a perfect blue hour shoot. So I shot the canals of Middelburg that evening.

Talking about shots that didn’t work out as planned but then the situation changes so much you can adjust your plan and capture a great (even price winning 😱) shot! Went to the beach because I wanted to create some smashing wave pictures at a spot with wooden poles in the concrete. But the waves where that powerful my tripod couldn’t hold while the waves where crashing on the shore. Too bad but in most of the pictures there was a lot of movements because of the long shutter times I had to use. Decided to change my plan and try to shoot some smashing waves near a pier. While I arrived at the pier there was no one standing on it, where it is normally crowded during these summer storms. So, I took my chance to grab some splashes on top of the pier. But my luck didn’t end there yet! There was a ship coming home on that Friday night! Sent in the photo for a competition about coastal pictures and they selected my picture as the third best picture! 🎉

And if that wasn't enough already I also had my first publication in a magazine with 5 pictures from me 🤯

Health

Actually, I had a reasonable year regarding my health, I was getting fitter and having lesser days being dizzy, tired or going through the day with some palpitations. I even started working again for 40 hours! Till the postponed tests for the nodule showed up in October and the doctor panicked a bit because it doubled again in size. He wanted despite the Corona winter on its way the check-ups being planned as fast as possible and well the news was luckily a bit positive. But it did stress me out! The nodule is still a lvl2 and because I don’t have any issues regarding swallowing my food, talking and the nodule is very close located to my vocal cords he decided to let it rest and regularly check. Also got my own hotline now with the doctor 😅

You know what I even did with the help from @dboontje!? I did some supping, yes you read it correct. I was back on the board again. No windsurfing yet and it was on flat water, but nonetheless a surfboard underneath my feet yeah! 💪 🎉

Work

Even with my health I improved at my work as well. Did a switch to a different profession inside the company and got an assignment inside the new work field pretty fast. No day rest between my old assignment and the new one in April. Learned a lot on the job, but I also started the studying for the new cloud certificates. I even joined an AWS course although I choose the Azure route. Lots of plans for the year, thinking about joining a master/apprentice course inside the company. Will ask a lot of effort from my side but I think I can start to handle these things again. Letting my discission about this depend on the permit for the house so we do know when we can start building (or not) and I can plan this properly.

2022

Already two weeks into the new year and can't wait to see what will happen with all the plans me and my girlfriend have, how my health will keep up and so on! Wishing you all the best for this year and hopefully we can see each other again in real life during Hivefest!

PS. As you might have heard, I'm not 100% healthy at the moment. A reply at a comment can take a while. Sorry in advance for that... ?

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