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2023 was definitely a year, that's for sure, full of ups and downs as I fully embraced my phrase for the year, "challenge accepted". I did so many fantastic things in 2023 and hit some of the goals I've made, but it wasn't without its hard parts. Let's dive in!

The good!

• I ran a half marathon! I ran my last half marathon back in 2014 and I enjoyed it so much that I knew I'd want to run another one someday. Well, 9 years later, I did it! It was a way harder race than my first one and I was sore for days afterward, but I'm so glad I did it. Hopefully next time I train more so I'm not hurting after the fact!

• For the first time in my 17 year career, I got a promotion! I went from a senior front-end developer to a lead engineer, and I'm excited to see where this new role takes me within Lullabot and with clients in 2024.

• I spoke at 5 conferences in 2023, but I'll talk about those later on in the post.

• I wrote 13 blog posts in 2023, by far the most posts I've written in at least 10 years. I wrote reviews of albums I was too cool for in the 00s, posted two old mixtapes, and recapped a couple conferences I attended.

• I started playing D&D with a person I met through a local board game group. It's been fun playing with a group of people who are more heavily into the role-playing aspect of D&D, which means I've had to be more creative with developing my character's personality and backstory. It's been an interesting challenge!

• At long last, I finally got my tattoo fixed. I made the HUGE mistake of going swimming the day I got my tattoo in 2017 (I KNOW), so my hop tattoo has looked blotchy and weird for years. This year, I finally made the appointment to touch it up, and now it looks great! Next up, getting more tattoos...

• I attended one concert, They Might Be Giants, and saw one movie, Barbie. Both were excellent.

• I traveled a bunch: Palm Springs for the Lullabot retreat, Orlando for Florida Drupal Camp, Asheville with friends, DrupalCon Pittsburgh, Salem for Design 4 Drupal, Minneapolis for Twin Cities Drupal Camp, upstate NY for Rhinebeck, New York City, Bethesda for Drupal GovCon, and multiple trips to Providence and Boston.

The not good

• In the middle of the year, I discovered a moth infestation in my apartment. This has been so hard to deal with, even now--I had to throw out almost all of my yarn, a blanket my mom made me in the 90s, the Christmas stockings I've knit over the years, and a bunch of other things. I still have some yarn in my freezer and most of my clothes are still in plastic tubs, mainly because I'm scared the moths will return. I spent a lot of my summer really upset and freaked out that even more of my things would be ruined, but I'm crossing my fingers that I've taken care of the problem once and for all.

• Because of the above, my mental health wasn't the best in the second half of 2023. I spent the latter half of the year facing my shit head-on and dealing with things in my personal life that I've also needed to process for years. I guess 2023 was the year to do it! Even though I ended the year in a not so great state, I'm optimistic that the work I did on myself will pull me out of it and I'll build on the foundations I've created.

• We at Lullabot lost one of our coworkers, Hawkeye Tenderwolf, in 2023. I'm gutted that he's gone as he was a fantastic, intelligent, quirky person and he is greatly missed.

Speaking and writing elsewhere

As I mentioned above, I spoke at 5 conferences this year in 5 different states:

• In February, Adam Varn and I gave a talk at Florida Drupal Camp based off the post we wrote for the Lullabot blog, "New Things We Love and More Things We Want in CSS". (Read my blog post about Florida Drupal Camp.)

After that conference, I wrote a new talk, "Do you Still Need Sass in 2023?" and spoke at

• Design 4 Drupal in Salem, MA;
• Twin Cities Drupal Camp in Minneapolis, MN;
• Drupal GovCon in Bethesda, MD;
• and New England Drupal Camp in Providence, RI. (Read my blog post about NEDCamp.)

I am so happy to have spoken at so many different conferences in 2023 and I'm glad to have met so many new people.

As for 2024, I'm writing a new talk and am slated to give it at Florida Drupal Camp in February. I'm hoping to submit this new talk to other conferences in 2024 as well. Also, I'll find out in a little over a month if I'll be speaking at DrupalCon Portland!

Wrapping up

2023 was a strange year for me, a year where I worked on myself a LOT to get in the right space to make big changes in my life. In 2024, I'm hoping to make these changes and live the kind of life I want to live. I've also learned that perfectionism isn't my friend and it will be okay if I don't make every single change I want to make this year. Any progress is good progress and I've built a good foundation to make 2024 an excellent year.

Another year, another New England Drupal Camp (better known as NEDCamp) in the books! This has been one of my favorite camps and not only because it’s local, but also because of the quality sessions. I’ve been attending this camp since 2016 and have even written a couple posts about previous camps. It was a whirlwind trip for me as I spent only a little over 24 hours in Providence, but I had such a good time.

Pre-camp

I drove to Providence on Friday afternoon. I thought leaving at 2:30 would help me avoid any dreaded Mass Pike traffic that always seems to materialize on a Friday afternoon, but alas, the hour and a half drive to Rhode Island took me 3 hours. Thankfully the weather wasn’t bad, at least!

I finally arrived at the hotel at 5:30, checked into my room, then ventured down to the lobby to meet up with some of my fellow Drupal buddies. I attended the community social just a short walk away from the hotel, and I chatted with a bunch of old friends and new people. Went to dinner with some fellow Lullabot colleagues and ended the day with a nightcap at the hotel! All in all, a fun evening and a great way to start the camp!

The sessions

As always, I attended a bunch of quality sessions. I decided to switch it up a bit and attend non-technical talks and I’m so glad I did! Here’s what I attended this year:

Do You Still Need Sass in 2023? by me!

Yes, I spoke during the first slot of the day! I thought my talk went pretty well—I talked about new things in native CSS, how to use PostCSS, how you can use modern CSS today even while using Sass, and of course I talked about if you still needed Sass in 2023. Want to know the answer? You’ll just need to watch my talk!

Creating Nimble Drupal Systems: Transforming a Drupal Team in 6 Months by Ivan Stegic

I loved hearing Ivan’s story of how he and his team built a Drupal site for a state government in 6 months and the challenges they faced in discovery, migration, user experience, and accessibility. We build a lot of sites for state governments at Lullabot, so this was an interesting session to learn about how other teams accomplish a site build in 6 months.

Keynote: The Inner Work of Being a Public Good by Whitney Hess

This was such an interesting keynote! I knew a little about Drupal becoming a digital public good earlier this year, but I loved learning more. She talked a little about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals which I knew a little about from my current client at work, but it was interesting to learn more about these goals and about the Inner Development Goals framework to identify skills to help drive change.

Drupal Coffee Exchange

One of my favorite parts of any Drupal Con or Camp, I love exchanging coffee with fellow coffee snobs! I brought a bag of coffee from a local roaster in the Berkshires, and I came home with a lovely blend from a roastry in Keene, NH. I can’t wait to try it!

Debugging Yourself: How to Move Forward When the Blocker is You by Nichole Addeo

This session hit me hard. Nichole talked about getting in her head about work and what career she should take, feeling like an impostor, and feeling like nothing felt right to her, job-wise. Yep, I’ve been there! I nodded along as she talked about figuring it out and knowing that strength comes from within. I really loved this talk.

Designing Human-Centered Navigation: Information Architecture Principles for structuring a website by Dan Zollman

This talk was absolutely out of my wheelhouse and it was so interesting because I don’t deal with information architecture on a day to day basis! I loved Dan’s example of trying to figure out how to get health insurance from the health connector in Massachusetts, something I’ve had to do in the past and struggled with. I really want to learn more about information architecture and this is a good session in which to start!

At the end of the day I attended the afterparty, which consisted of my favorite appetizer of bacon wrapped scallops and local Rhode Island beers. After some food, a drink, and great conversation with other Drupalists, I drove home, making much better time than I had on Friday night. Thanks for another great year, NEDCamp, and I can’t wait for NEDCamp 2024!

I love this mix. This is one of the most honest mixtapes I’ve ever made, recording this a month after the end of my first serious relationship and right when I started casually seeing someone new (and having that end a few weeks later, oh college). Yeah, typical early 20s shenanigans, but this mix captures both the endings and beginnings I experienced at this time of my life.

My very early 20s make me laugh now because I would make cryptic posts in my Livejournal about my crush and post emo song lyrics in my AIM profile. I honestly think it’s adorable, looking back, but at the time I thought everything I went through was soooo serious and dramatic and that I’d never get through it. Here I am though, 21 years later (HALF MY LIFE AGO HOW), so far on the other side of the drama that it’s funny to remember it in 2023.

Want to see what I looked like at the time I made this mix? I almost definitely had this picture as my default Livejournal avatar for a little bit and even though this was me dressed up for Halloween, this is how I felt on the inside during this time period. So dramatic.

Blurry photo for dramatic effect? Check. Heavy eye makeup? Double check. My black and purple hair was definitely a 2002 era look!

On to the mix!

Mix — November 15, 2002

Side 1

1. Propellerheads, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”
2. Brand New, “Seventy Times 7”
3. The Dandy Warhols, “Just Try”
4. Guided by Voices, “Fair Touching”
5. Depeche Mode, “Nothing”
6. Fountains of Wayne, “Red Dragon Tattoo”
7. Old 97’s, “King of All the World”
8. Flogging Molly, “Devil’s Dance Floor”
9. Taking Back Sunday, “Great Romances of the 20th Century”
10. Self, “So Low”
11. R.E.M., “So. Central Rain”
12. Weezer, “Dope Nose”
13. Green Day, “Only of You”

Side 2

1. New Order, “Crystal”
2. Brand New, “Last Chance to Lose Your Keys”
3. The Dandy Warhols, “The Dandy Warhols’ TV Theme Song”
4. Oasis, “The Hindu Times”
5. Ladytron, “Playgirl”
6. Buzzcocks, “Ever Fallen in Love?”
7. R.E.M., “Strange Currencies”
8. Guided by Voices, “Skills Like This”
9. Stereophonics, “Pick a Part That’s New”
10. Weezer, “El Scorcho”
11. The Juliana Theory, “If I Told you This was Killing Me, Would you Stop?”
12. The Dandy Warhols, “Nothing”
13. Travis, “Sing”

Spotify playlist

Highlights:

• I loved the SHIT out of Propellerheads in my early 20s, and I LOVED driving to the song I included here. It’s a bold move starting a mix with a 9 minute song, but even 21 old me was a bold woman!
• Like the 2004 mix I posted a few months ago, I still listen to a couple of the songs on this mix today. The Dandy Warhols will always be a fave.
• A bunch of songs I loved in high school make their appearance on this mix: Stereophonics? That super old Fountains of Wayne song? I find it interesting I included them with a bunch of bands I had just discovered, like Ladytron and Guided by Voices.
• I still love that Green Day song because it’s so cute and reminds me of early 20s feels.
• Devil’s Dance Floor is so fun and I want to get up and dance every time I hear it.

Reflections:

• What is UP with all the Brand New? And Taking Back Sunday? And Juliana Theory? Those did NOT age well! I alternated between laughing at the pretentiousness (and, well, creepiness) of those songs and cringing at the cheesiness of them.
• Dope Nose? I liked that song at some point? I seriously can’t remember why I put it on this tape. Maybe I had been listening to a lot of Maladroit in late 2002? Shrug. (The Green Album was better and Pinkerton better than that.)
• So many references to calling people on the phone in these songs! It was the early 00s, after all!
• In hindsight, I wish I had put the Dandy Warhols’ TV Theme Song after Red Dragon Tattoo, because the latter ends with clapping while the former begins with it. 21 years later and I JUST thought of that.
• I did not listen to a lot of women artists in the early 00s and this mix totally reflects that. I'm so glad I listen to a wider variety of music now!

All in all, this was an interesting mix to listen to over 20 years later—this mix captures this time in my life perfectly and I’m glad I made it! Hope you all enjoyed it too.

I’ve been writing many blog posts about albums I was too cool for in the mid-00s, so let’s change it up for a second. What was I actually listening to in that time frame? What did I deem to be cool enough for mid-20s me? Do I still even listen to some of this stuff? Let’s find out!

I created many a mix tape in the late 90s and early 2000s. I received a boom box with two cassette players and a CD player for my 17th birthday in 1997, and since my main hobby at the time was listening to music on the radio, finding songs I loved and trying to find out more about them without going on the internet (I wasn’t quite online yet in 1997!), I couldn’t wait to start making mix tapes from the CDs I owned and songs I taped off the radio.

I compiled so many mix tapes while I was in high school in the late 90s, and when I finally received my driver’s license in 2000, I started rocking the streets of western Massachusetts in my 1997 Toyota Camry with all the tapes I had created. I didn’t make as many once I hit college, and once I bought my very first CD burner, I started making mix CDs instead of tapes. (I still like mix tapes better, for the record.)

Finally, in 2004, I created my last mix tape. It was kind of a last hurrah for me; I knew I’d never make another one again because hey, 2004! CDs still reigned supreme for a couple more years, but the iPod started becoming the de facto way to listen to music and cassettes started becoming less and less popular. Still, I wanted to make this particular mix a tape instead of a CD.

Since I knew this would be the last tape I’d make, I took a picture of mix tape making in progress. I long since stopped listening to oldschool radio in 2004, instead switching to Sirius radio sometime in 2003. You may recognize many of the songs on this album as staples on the Left of Center station on Sirius circa 2003, but hey, that’s what I liked, and it was waaaaayyyy cooler than that popular stuff (eye roll here).

This entry can't be complete without a picture of me from about a week or so after I made the tape! I definitely look like a 23 year old who secretly thought I was cooler than everyone.

On to the tape!

Picking out the colors to use on the playlist was an art in itself! As was choosing the end of each side and of course, the songs that started and ended the entire tape.

Playlist

Side 1:

1. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, “Love Burns”
2. Dandy Warhols: “We Used to Be Friends”
3. The White Stripes: “You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)”
4. Zwan: “Of a Broken Heart”
5. The Strokes: “Reptilia”
6. Guided by Voices: “Tractor Rape Chain”
7. R.E.M.: “Country Feedback”
8. Sun Kil Moon: “Carry Me Ohio”
9. The Charlatans “North Country Boy”
10. Grandaddy: “Now It’s On”
11. Mojave 3: “Starlite #1”
12. George Harrison: “What is Life”
13. Travis: “Beautiful Occupation”
14. The Rolling Stones: “19th Nervous Breakdown”
15. The Strokes, “Someday”
16. New Order, “Run Wild”

Side 2:

1. Dressy Bessy, “Just Once More”
2. The Kinks: “A Well-Respected Man”
3. R.E.M.: “Bad Day”
4. Zwan: “Declarations of Faith”
5. Oranger: “Bluest Glass Eye Sea”
6. Sun Kil Moon: “Lily and Parrots”
7. Idlewild “You Held the World in your Arms”
8. Dandy Warhols: “The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everyone”
9. Guided by Voices: “Everywhere with Helicopter”
10. Elbow: “Fallen Angel”
11. The Strokes: “Under Control”
12. The White Stripes: “Hypnotize”
13. R.E.M.: “Fall on Me”
14. Vast: “Free”
15. Oasis: “Listen Up”
16. Foo Fighters: “Times Like These”
17. The Strokes: “Hard to Explain”
18. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: “Salvation”

Spotify playlist
(Consists of everything but the two Zwan songs, which aren’t on Spotify for some reason. Probably for the best!)

Thoughts

• This is a suuuper 2004 era list for me with all the Strokes and White Stripes on the playlist!
• Why did I include those particular Dandy Warhols songs? I assume I included a bunch of my earlier faves on an earlier tape or two.
• I love starting mixes with Love Burns and ending them with Salvation, and I still make playlists this way today, almost 20 years later.
• I forgot that I liked R.E.M. as much as I did back then. And "Bad Day", while one of their more mediocre songs, is STILL fun to sing in the car!
• I was dating my first husband when I made this tape. Guess which song was one of 'our' songs? (Probably not the one you think.)

Songs/artists I still enjoy

• Dandy Warhols. I’ve liked them since 1997 and I continue to enjoy them in 2023.
• Guided by Voices never get old.
• I loved the shit out of the Oranger, Mojave 3, and Grandaddy CDs and while I haven’t listened to any of them in years, they hold a special place in my heart.
• That Vast song is a deep cut from my high school days and it’s surprising that it took until 2004 to be included on a tape!

Not so much...

• I can’t say I’m as into the White Stripes now as I was back in 2004.
• Zwan. Really? I’m glad their music isn’t on Spotify because, cringe!
• Only one Oasis song? Guess I wasn’t listening to them much in 2004, but they made many appearances on older tapes from high school.
• I wish the Sun Kil Moon singer wasn’t shitty because man, “Carry Me Ohio” is SO GOOD. One of my favorite driving at night songs.

Looking back, I LOVED this tape. I listened to so much new music on Sirius at the time, and I'm glad I made a tape that reflected my musical interests. Though I still listen to some of the music on this tape, this playlist is such a time capsule to my 2004 life and writing this post and listening to the Spotify playlist brought me back to that time. "How does it feel to be three years late and watching your youth drift away" is a much more poignant lyric at 42 than it was at 23, though maybe I knew at the time that it would mean something as I got older. Who knows!

This was a thoroughly enjoyable exercise and I look forward to going through more of my old tapes, and I hope you enjoyed it too!

I must have heard some Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs in 2003 when Fever to Tell was released, but I can’t really remember. They must have been mentioned in the many music magazines I bought and read back then (who else remembers Magnet?). If anything, I must have heard Maps, but Maps doesn’t stick out in my mind until I heard it again in 2009. Then again, maybe I’m mixing it up with Heads will Roll, which DID come out in 2009. I don’t know. Clearly I didn’t pay much attention to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

On to the review!

Loves

The album started off with “Rich”, which I totally enjoyed. I love their energy and it totally came through in this song!

I also liked “Black Tongue”, about midway through the album. It reminded me a lot of the other garage-y music I listened to in the mid 00s, so I dug it.

My favorite part of the album, though, came near the end—Maps, Y Control, and Modern Romance. Of course Maps is fantastic and essentially a perfect song, Y Control the perfect high-energy follow up, and Modern Romance slowed it down and showed some emotion! Those three songs told a story and I listened with delight.

Mehs

I almost loved the rest of the songs on the album, but every single one of them had something I didn’t like and caused me to not enjoy them as much. I can’t put my finger on it but it made the songs not as enjoyable to me. However, I can totally see how great all these songs would be live, and maybe it’s more of a loss in translation between a live show and a studio recording. I’m not sure.

Overall thoughts

I really thought I’d like this album more than I actually did. I thought the first few songs all sounded the same to me, and I found myself getting bored listening to the same thing over and over again!

I loved the three songs toward the end—Maps, Y Control, and Modern Romance—and wished there’d been more songs like Maps. I guess there is only one song like Maps, though, and nothing else even came close to that song on this album.

However, I can see this album being AMAZING live, and perhaps maybe the album does’t actual capture the energy of a live show. I’d totally see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in concert, even though I didn’t especially dig this album.