I intended to write about my personal live and my professional live in this post. But I have decided to split it up. There is so much to write about both of those and most of you are probably not interested in my personal stuff. So this post is only about personal stuff. No tech- and no career-related content or similar. But in turn there are a lot of pics of myself 😝

I will follow up with a dedicated post about my work at Hashnode, side projects etc. in a dedicated post...

My Year 2023

In February I was traveling to Munich with my pregnant wife to visit Sandro Volpicella and after a short stay travel with him and his girlfriend to Austria to meet Florian Fuchs and Ronald Blüthl – friends and (ex-)colleagues – for my second skiing session of my life (the first was in school more than 10 years earlier). We had a really good time. Great start into the year! But it will get way better...

You won't find Sandro on this pic because he got sick shortly before skiing.

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In April I participated at my first HYROX. HYROX is a fitness race in which you run 1km, do an exercise, like burpees, and repeat that with 7 different exercises. I started together with a friend in mixed doubles (you can alternate during exercises). I love to take new fitness challenges at least once a year. It is a great feeling to have a fitness goal to train for. We finished the race in 01:23:51. With that I achieved my goal to finish in under 30 minutes. Shortly after the race I have signed up for another HYROX starting alone – another challenge later that year.

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Now to my highlight of 2023: I became a dad to two lovely girls in May. This was the most life-changing event I ever had. It can be exhausting, and my time is now much more externally controlled, but on the flip side, it is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Looking back on my life from my deathbed, being a good dad is always something I want to be able to say about myself. Now I can actively work on that life-goal and try to be a good role-model. I have not experienced anything close to seeing the smiles and hearing the laughs of my two daughters 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧❤️

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One month after the birth of our twins, we moved from Hamburg to my small hometown (<2000 citizens) one hour away from Hamburg. It's quite a contrast... But the additional space and especially being near our family and the new, first-time grandparents made it worth it. In addition to that, I finally got some space in the basement for a home gym 😎

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In September we went on our first holidays as a family. We packed our bikes and drove to the Netherlands. They have awesome bike lanes. We cycled 147km in 4 tours. The kids loved it – and so did my wife and I. We will do this again for sure!

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Shortly after that vacation I again sat in a train to Munich to visit Sandro Volpicella. We went to the the AWS Community Day which was awesome. So many interesting talks and we met even more interesting folks. I can highly recommend it. After it we met Ronald Blüthl again for a hike. (It is sad that there are basically no mountains in northern Germany).

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I have participated in the HYROX competition in men single in November. It was way harder than starting in doubles – you can't alternate during exercises 🤯 Unfortunately I got sick a week before that and wasn't able to recover fully. I am not happy with my result of finishing at 01:35:45 but I gave everything I got with a heart rate of 182 BPM on average and a peak of 201 BPM 🥵 (Yes, it wasn't a reasonable decision to go all out after being sick...). I will for sure start again with the goal of a finishing time below 1:25h. This is me about half into the race and already being near my limit:

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The year ended with a two week vacation that I spent with family and friends. I did almost nothing "productive" and was able to recharge. Even though spending all day with two babies is no joke 😅 Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it and now I am ready to crush 2024.