Week 51, the final working week this year for me, has finished. Level 2024 has been more or less completed. It was another very busy week, not in the least due to loads of stuff coming in from people who are busy clearing their own backlogs of things-not-yet-done-this-year. I postponed several things as I realised I wasn’t going to get meaningful responses anyway before the new year. Still it was a busy week.

This week I

• Had internal discussions on reviewing our company’s salary structures
• Had the weekly client meetings
• With E had lunch with my sister C, who came bearing extremely generous gifts.
• Had the annual review/reflection conversation with colleague E.
• Discussed a second week long retreat on Systems Convening with Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner in Portugal, sometime coming spring
• Over dinner discussed with the PKM Summit team who to approach as speakers and contributors. If you have any European PKM ‘heroes’ in mind, do let me know!
• Made a presentation and presented about the European standardisation efforts for data spaces at an intergovernmental data strategy meet-up, to motivate other public sector entities to participate in setting these standards.
• With Y listened to a public performance by E on guitar. The music school she attends hosts these performance evenings every now and then, and different students play.
• Did the final company financial things for this year with colleague F.
• Participated in the European kick-off of JTC25 Working Group 2 that will create the European harmonised standard for trusted data transactions in which I will participate.
• Participated in the last part of our monthly team in person meet-up, which coincided with the JTC25 meeting.
• Had the annual Christmas dinner with our entire team at colleague’s F home. It was fun and relaxed.
• Had a Christmas lunch with the team of a client.
• Made cucumber sandwiches for Y’s school class Christmas dinner.
• Created and sent out Kiva cards as Christmas gifts to our clients.
• Took Y to her singing lessons
• Finished a proposal for a subsidy request for the Foundation that supports the main Dutch Mastodon instance, and sent it in.
• Started writing my annual review posting.
• Went into town Saturday morning as Y was singing at a Christmas market with the choir from her singing lessons. She was very nervous but did well. We had lunch in town with the three of us afterwards.
• Found time to make some new notes on novel topics, which I enjoyed doing.
• Watched the third Harry Potter movie together, now that Y has finished reading book three.
• Remade my Weekly Review template, both to automate some elements, as well as to integrate some of the things I started doing to deal with my burn-out. Also made a dashboard for myself to quickly check-in with my self on the various aspects that speaking with my psychologist about burn-out brought to the fore as important.

The final week of the year I will take off from work. Although there are many things I enjoy doing in my spare time that look eerily similar to work.