Happy New Year and All the Best for 2026!

I wish everyone a wonderful year filled with success, love, and joy. May it be a good one for all of you!

2025 was a mixed bag and a wild roller coaster ride. It had a lot of great moments, brought some major changes [the biggest one will be a move next month – down a flight of stairs and into a ground-floor unit in the next building], and confirmed some things I tried to push aside.

My health has been an ongoing issue for years now and has been showing its nasty progressive nature again last year. It’s the little things that get harder, the small automated moves that suddenly fail, the strength I took for granted that’s no longer there. My hands are the most visible sign of the neuro-muscular disease slowly claiming more and more ground. The fingers don’t straighten properly, the muscle has wasted some more in the hands and lower arms, and fine motor skills, including typing, have been reduced. Oddly enough, I am back to a sturdy gaming keyboard [from a soft-touch Logitech] which requires more force [and it’s working fine – I still can’t type and the 10 finger days are well and truly history ;)].

In 2025, I put even more focus on my health and fitness. A big step was a further detachment from a lot of social media accounts. I am not missing it that much. Instead, I spent more time on my morning walks [and sunrise photos], the pool, and the bike rides. The goal for the year was 5000 km [~3100 miles] – after getting close the year prior. I reached that target by October, added another 1000 km by December, and ended the year just shy of 6400 km. Stubbornness and discipline prevailed.

I tried to get as many blog posts and tutorial videos out as I could… yet still being way short of what I expected to achieve. On the upside, the helpful hints [both the Affinity as well as the Inkscape version] got a major update. The Facebook user groups on both tools kept me busy as well. As usual, I hope to get more done in the coming year… Let’s wait and see what happens.

January will be busy. The last lot of renovations in the new place are lined up, and I am waiting for the domino pieces to fall one after the other – cabinet maker, tiler, plumber, electrician, carpet guys, and finally the painters. At the end of the month, the [shortest] move will happen to allow a housewarming and birthday party in early February.