2022 was pretty intense. 2023 was intense but not in the same way.

Job 1 In January our team was disbanded by the higher powers. I was sent into another team responsible for developing an email marketing software in C#. I tried to approach this as a new opportunity instead of as a major blow, but after a while I could no longer pretend.

Job 2 I joined another company in October. The first two months were a bit of a hard adjustment and some things still are. I'm part of a young team and we still need to find a common way of working that's sane and productive for everyone. I have great hopes for 2024 in this regard.

Programming as a hobby suddendly emerged in September. I developed a small game called "guess the face" in Elixir. No fancy language features, just a very simple idea. I have another idea for a Plug I'm pretty excited about but still need to find time and energy to type it out in full. I'm happy programming is making a come back in my life.
September was an important month this year, mostly because I didn't work as I was between Job1 and Job2. I spent a lot of time drawing, reading, programming, and playing the recorder.
Music also made a comeback in 2023. I bought a cheap Alto Recorder and started practicing. I'm not obsessing over it, I play just a few hours a month which for now is enough to see some progress and have fun. My goal is just to enjoy producing sounds. The fact that I can give myself such a humble goal is a great achievement.

I wanted to keep this for last, but I feel that nothing will make sense unless we touch on this very 2023 topic.
In April 2023 I joined Fine Art Academy Cologne. My initial idea was to find a place where I could draw and improve at a relaxed pace, compatible with my working schedule, but still with a serious foundation. I must admit that I underestimated how much time and energy it would take me. I'm attending 9 hours a week on top of my full time job. If I have some time off I can leverage, I go between 12 and 15 hours a week. It's basically a second job.
Don't get me wrong, I love it and I'm so happy I took the plunge. My skills grew at an incredible rate in less than 1 year and I even started oil painting. The more I see myself improving, the more hours I want to spend, but sometimes I hit a physical limit where I'm just too tired. I'm learning to pace myself. This type of dedication is not new to me, I smashed my hands by practicing guitar too much. I got all kinds of injuries afterwards, doing Girevoy sport. Everything I do, I feel that I need to push myself to what's physically possible.
Both my girlfriend and my therapist are concerned about this personality trait. They ask me why I do this, what's my goal. Do I want to become a fine artist? do I want to change careers? Actually, no. I don't have a goal, I don't have a finish line, I just want to get better. I don't want to get better than somebody else, I want to get better than my current self. This is at the same time achievable and non-achievable and this type of double binding can sometimes make me think that drawing is the most important thing in my life.
That's why I said that playing the recorder just for the sake of it is a great achievement for me. So is playing basketball during lunch break in the summer. So is playing Go once in a while and being OK with not practicing and not improving.

Intermezzo - books of the year
This year, again, I read too many books. The most significant ones were probably "The artist's way" and "The life changing magic of tidy-ing up". No, I'm not joking. The artist's way made me conscious of so many mental blocks that I was giving myself. I still have a lot of those, but it's getting better. The Marie Kondo book touched a string that I feel no other could. This strange feeling we have for objects, how we treat objects as if they have feelings, it's something Marie talks about and addresses full on.
I have the tendency to see my belongings in terms of boxes. How many boxes of books I have? I moved around so much that it became second nature.
That said, I haven't achieved my minimalist dream yet. I have a fairly accurate inventory of everything I own in Germany and I try to get rid of something whenever I buy something new.

Social life has been another big theme in 2023. I feel very much alone and I'm not entirely sure how to get out of this situation. I still play Go on Thursday nights, but not much has come out of it in terms of friendships. There's one or two guys I click with more than others but everything stays inside the Go playing area. I talk with a couple of people at the Academy but again, not much goes beyond drawing and painting. Most of my talking is done with the teacher, we take a coffee sometimes and talk about things outside of art.
I've also started to attend some meetings of the local Urban Sketchers but the people are rarely nice and mostly ignore me. I'm still looking for something I can do with my limited time and limited energy that won't suck, but it's harder than I thought.
Maybe because of this I started to do more things alone. I go to the cinema alone, I go to concerts alone and even travel alone. It's not as weird as I thought, honestly it's liberating.
I'm realizing that my post last year was much more positive. I was happy I had the courage to finally take this step and move to Germany. I thought I could integrate easily and solve all the problems. The more I stay here, the more I realize that I'm just not German.

Integration has been another topic. At this point I don't even know what that means. What do the Germans want from me? Besides speaking the language, which is coming along, I believe that I will never be fully German. Our cultural backgrounds and biases are too different. I cannot go back in time and read the literature and watch the shows they did in their teenage years. I think Dante will always be much better than Goethe. Leopardi will always be better than Hölderlin. I'm not interested in celebrating Karnival like they do. I want to integrate, not assimilate, but I feel time and again that the German wall has no pores. At the same time I don't want to go back to Italy and live in poverty again.

Intermezzo - travels
This year I feel that I traveled a lot. Pelin and I travel regularly to each other's city and sometimes to nearby towns like Bonn and Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf is a really nice town with a beautiful promenade and great museums. We always have a great time when we go there. Bonn is more chill, they have Sakuras in the spring and nice cafes.
This year we also visited Monschau, a little town south of Aachen. Valkenbuurg and Herleen in the Netherlands. Koblenz was a major disappointment for me. We went to Frankfurt to celebrate Newroz and enjoyed walking in the city centre. Finally we went to Paris at the end of June and Treviglio at the end of September. In Paris we mostly visited the usual touristic spots which Pelin didn't enjoy so much, but we spent a lovely afternoon at Parc de la Villette which was on her list. I really wanted to see the Louvre again but it was so crowded that I didn't enjoy it at all.
I traveled solo twice. In September I went to Trier and had a fantastic time visiting the Roman ruins and the Constantine Basilica. For Christmas I went to Treviglio and spent a week with friends and family.

What do I expect for 2024? Last year I wrote that I wanted to "learn how to breath and enjoy life." This happened, somewhat. I breathed and realized a lot more things about my situation in Germany. In the coming year I want to keep working on my German and maybe find a social situation in which I feel comfortable.