A couple of weeks ago we took a little break. The first adults-only break since my daughter was born. For that reason, we decided to do something that was quite close to home. I am still was quite nervous about being far away from her and I didn’t want to go abroad because of her seizures. So I figured that we should stay near London and a small train journey away. Ideally, a train journey that wouldn’t be too expensive and that we could go on the day without price difference. Since we’re based in South London, we chose to go to the New Forest.

I had a goal to be as offline as possible. I still posted some photos online and checked messages. But I was mostly offline without doom scrolling. And, it was great!!

We don’t have a car or drive, so we took the train. And to save some money, we split our stays between two places. The first few days in a pub and then ending the week in a spa hotel. Normally pub hotels are cheaper however they get a bit louder in the evening probably from Wednesday until Sunday. So we stayed from Monday until Wednesday in a room above a pub and it was lovely. From Wednesday until Friday, we stayed in a spa hotel. We were so lucky because, as anyone who's been living in the UK knows, up until then, it was basically raining every day. And it rained on the days we booked the spa hotel.

The first stop was Lyndhurst. We took the train to Brokenhurst and from there a short taxi taxi ride. Lovely town. We went to the local museum, which was super cute. I didn’t look up a single thing beforehand - I am the opposite of a type A holiday person. I’ve mentioned before that these days I’m quite interested in textile crafts and it was super interesting to see sections in that visitor centre that included a lot of embroidery and textile art featuring the forest and nature of it.

I spent a lot of time studying this frame because it used so many different styles, fabrics and scraps in different techniques. And it was deeply, deeply satisfying. And I took a lot from it.

We had fantastic meals and short walks on the first day. And of course, we saw many horses. It was tempting but I followed the rules and didn’t touch them. And we mostly settled in the main town to scout pubs.

The following day we rented a bike, and this was my favorite day. We spent basically 6 hours cycling through the north West of the forest. I had so much fun. I caught myself smiling when cycling down hills. I downloaded an app recommended by the bike rental shop and it would point out spots to stop by. So of course, I took a photo with the Portuguese Fireplace Memorial because you can get a girl out of Portugal but you don't get the Portuguese out of her lol.

We stopped for lunch in a little cafe that had a little garden to walk around and probably one of the best cakes I’ve ever had. This one had donkeys instead of horses and so I couldn’t help but take a few photos of them.

But of course, no big bike ride goes without little hiccups. Eventually a puncture happened at the end of the day when we were heading back to return the bikes. We were 2 miles out of the bike rental shop and it was the first time I ever used the 3 words app since installing it years ago! Previously we had been stuck in a bog (because we trusted the app rather than the physical signs in the park 🤦🏻‍♀️) so we couldn’t find the puncture to use the puncture kit. Anyway, two miles wasn’t the worst. It didn’t ruin our mood. During the day I was just cycling super fast, which was so exciting. I never do these things. Predictably, my bum was super sore, and there’s no chance I would be able to cycle the next day.

So day two was a perfect cycling out day, which ended with a wonderful meal, a little walk around the charity shops. Then the following day, we went to Leamington via train for a little seaside view, walk, check the little town and art museum.

I found a crafts charity shop which was immensely exciting. I wanted to spend hours there. I did buy a few things, mostly threads which came out quite cheap.

Middle of the week and it was time to check-in at the spa hotel. Again, surrounded by wonderful walk options with so many horses. I was still quite sore so it was perfect to physically relax, have great meals and spend a lot of time playing UNO, reading books, walking about, and resting. It was great.

I barely checked my phone. I didn’t check the news. I was so happy.

It really is the stupid phone ruining everything isn’t it? The stupid screens of doom and the stupidity of the world isn’t it?

Anyway, I hope to do more things like this soon. One thing I’ve realised last year is that I was so overwhelmed with my house move and renovation, then writing a talk that I forgot to take holidays. And that’s something I don’t want to repeat this year so we’ve been more proactive at booking time off even if it’s just a stay at home and just enjoy those days offline. That’s it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

So I’ve been thinking, when was the last time I’ve experienced some sort of burnout from a community. And I had forgotten that tech was not my only interest, or the only thing I’ve been deeply enthralled with. While I started making websites when I was 13, I wasn’t always stuck on only thinking about web development as a hobby and career.

I used to be quite obsessed with films and filmmaking. I spent a great chunk of my young adulthood watching films and analysing them. I had semesters in university dedicated to it. I even used to organise a film festival! I was really obsessed with films! From watching the latest and obscure films, going to film festivals abroad and participating in shorts competitions. And the worst: even dated a filmmaker! It was a thing I used to love and even envisioned making my own. And at one point, like an ick, my interest in it disappeared instantly.

And I’m reflecting now because I was washing my dishes after having scrolled for a little bit on BlueSky. Stupid AI has mentally ruined me and my peers. It’s like everything has lost meaning. And I was thinking about how I technically also feel that burnout, that tiredness, that sadness, and that has been going on for years now. But to me, it started with the React world. It started when everything was done with a JavaScript framework, ignoring the web platform, the craft of back-end developers and dismissing the skills of front-end developers. And that’s when my burnout and my existential crisis in the web development community started.

Despite admitting online that I had a whole big girl cry over AI and the future of my career (and bills), I was reflecting on why this sadness doesn’t feel very strange to me. And I’ve realised it’s because I’ve been through this before with my previous passion: films. And I was trying to pinpoint the moment. When did this happen?

I have a very vivid memory of how there were photographers and cinematographers that started to get quite upset when DSLR cameras became more affordable to the public. I have this memory of people complaining and saying, “Oh, now everybody can call themselves a photographer. They buy a very expensive camera and they call themselves a photographer!”. And I remember seeing those posts online and feeling sad and rejected, because technically, due to my age, it was literally impossible for me to have started earlier in that industry. So yeah, I landed in a time where certain devices were more affordable to the public to buy. And people who had been there in that industry for so many years were not happy about how things became easier for newcomers. We see this in web development as well. I mean, web development has both sides of the coin: it’s either extremely open in teaching, welcoming and educating and breaking barriers for people to get into the industry, but it also can be extremely gatekeeping, mostly for self-preservation. While this was a bitter memory I quickly brushed it off as this wasn’t it. This wasn’t what made me leave. In fact, me and my colleagues at the time were thinking: “okay, some people are moaning about us not being real photographers because we are having it easier now. Okay. Our work will speak for itself.”.

Then it came to me. The exact moment I disconnected and it was like a black-and-white situation where my feelings vanished completely.

I went to a horror film festival that I used to love. I used to love horror films. I used to enjoy ghosts, aliens, zombies and monsters and anything that was unnatural or unrealistic. And then the selection of films I watched that year all involved sexual assault. That was the horror. I remember during one particular film that had an explicit brutal scene, I started to look around me in the theatre, and nobody was flinching. Nobody was uncomfortable or twisting their body or looking at their watch or their phone or wanting to leave their seat. Everybody was actually watching it as if that was entertainment. And I was disgusted. I was repulsed. I was uncomfortable. I felt I had lost respect for everybody around me. I was confused about why a daily thing that happens, a crime, a horror, was entertainment. And that was the moment. That was the moment I just never set foot in anything related to films again. And I know it’s not a representation of all films, all categories, all themes, all festivals. But I felt disconnected… mostly from the audience. Hundreds of people.

This is my peers' moment with web development with AI. They (and so am I) are disgusted by the lack of ethics, environmental consequences, the horrible uses of AI on the daily, horrible companies, horrible people. And we are looking around and everyone else is eating it up and enjoying it. This is the tipping point. And I get that.

For personal reasons, or whatever life reasons, I’m quite familiar with disappointment and lack of values being matched and having to move on. I can see that we will see people forced out of the industry or just move on to something else for their own sake. We will lose good people in exchange for cheap, quick and shit outputs. Quick horror film? Woman alone to be assaulted! Quick website? AI it.

I’ve cried a lot over AI. I’ve also cried a lot between 2015 and 2017. I couldn’t find a single job spec that cared about CSS. I thought I was useless and didn’t know where to turn or I should just give up.

I’ve recently been turning more and more to DIY, sewing and crafts to lift my spirits up. But doing so in a capitalist society is still daunting. The slop is everywhere. Even to wind-down I have to navigate the other craft’s shit show: the fast-fashion, polyester, fabric waste, drop-shipping, stolen designs, pollution, etc.

But even in those communities there's always the crafters: the people who care and will have you and teach you and support you.

That’s how I’ve been surviving since 2015. By trying to mingle and be where the crafters are. If given the choice wouldn’t you rather watch an Oscar nominated film instead of a fast-produced straight to streaming film? Wouldn’t you take a carefully ethically crafted wool jumper instead of a She-in polyester one?

And there isn’t really a conclusion to post. Just getting it out of the system and hope I can still pay bills until I die.

I am deeply frustrated with my inability to stick to the plan and do this post once a month. But I will really make an effort from now on because the more I delay the more links (and tabs) pile on and I end up not being able to share everything.

Bookmarks related to tech and web development

• Webmentions by Joe Crawford.
• Selfish reasons for building accessible UIs by Nolan Lawson.
• Radical Web.
• Bot or not? by Oleh.
• Charity Digital Skills.
• Being lazy with view-transition-old and -new by Cyd Stumpel.
• Url Town.
• Better CSS layouts: Time.com Hero Section by Ahmad Shadeed.
• Sceptical about website carbon emission figures by Fershad Irani.
• zine - personal websites and the law by Ava.
• Responsive Nav by Ariel Salminen.
• This website has no class by Adam Stoddard.
• Taking a shot at the double focus ring problem using modern CSS by Eric Bailey.
• Build for the Web, Build on the Web, Build with the Web by Harry Roberts.
• You no longer need JavaScript by Lyra.
• How To Argue With An AI Booster by Edward Zitron.
• Creating proportional, equal-height image rows with CSS, 11ty, and Nunjucks by Jeremy Robert Jones.
• Making sense of accessibility and the law by Martin Underhill.
• An Interactive Guide to SVG Paths by Josh Comeau.
• Still being a woman in tech by Melanie Crissey.
• Github Action that automatically compresses JPEGs, PNGs, WebPs & AVIFs in Pull Requests. by calibreapp.
• Generative AI: What You Need To Know by Baldur Bjarnason.
• Writing Code Was Never The Bottleneck by Pedro Tavares.
• Hack to the Future - Frontend by Matt Hobbs.
• Secret Web by Benjamin Hollon.
• JavaScript dos and donts by Mu-An Chiou.
• A pragmatic guide to modern CSS colours - part one by Kevin Powell.
• Opt Out Project by Janet Vertesi.
• My first months in cyberspace by Phil Gyford.
• Could Open Graph Just Be a CSS Media Type? by Scott Jehl.
• Top layer troubles: popover vs. dialog by Stephanie Eckles.
• Web Platform Status.
• Don't start testing accessibility with a screen reader by Erik Kroes.
• Not so short note on aria-label usage – Big Table Edition by stevef.
• HMRC's Virtual Empathy Hub.
• Dark Patterns Detective.
• Come to the light-dark() Side by Sara Joy.
• CSS light-dark() by Mayank.
• More options for styling details by Bramus.
• Preserving the Pixel Art Look in Web Content by kirupa.
• What is it like to use a screen reader on an inaccessible website? by Craig Abbott.
• Browser logos.
• Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face by Drew DeVault.
• The case for “old school” CSS by Chen Hui Jing.
• The rise of Whatever by Eevee.
• What I Wish Someone Told Me When I Was Getting Into ARIA by Eric Bailey.
• the web as a space to be explored by Roy Tang.
• How to (not) use aria-label, -labelledby and -describedby by Steve Frenzel.
• Cally by Nick Williams.
• Five ways cookie consent managers hurt web performance (and how to fix them) by Cliff Crocker.
• Get out of my head.
• no web without women by Selman.
• Bringing Joy Back to the Web: Fediverse vs. Centralized Apps by Richard MacManus.
• Wikipedia:Signs of AI writing.
• How to Surf the Web in 2025, and Why You Should by David Cain.
• The 'Accessibility' link is a Lie: My Adventures in Weaponizing Corporate Virtue Signaling by Robert Kingett.
• US dad takes photos of his naked toddler for the doctor, Google flags him as criminal
• Webring List.
• Pattern Craft.
• Simplified Accessibility Testing.
• A guide to creating accessible PDFs using free tools by Steve Frenzel.
• Zero to internet: your first website
• The Web you want
• Fixing Baselines by Roma Komarov.
• Why RSS matters by Ben Werdmuller.

Other bookmarks

• Productivity traps I fall into regularly by Dave Rupert.
• All the jobs I failed to get by Terence Eden.
• Clara's blogroll by Clara.
• Shamelessness as a strategy by Nadia Asparouhova.
• Everything I Know about Self-Publishing by Kevin Kelly.
• reasons to blog by chia amisola.
• Publishing personal content online while hiding yourself is a flawed but rational response to a broken internet by TDP.
• little directory of calm
• Friday Night Meatballs: How to Change Your Life With Pasta by Sarah Grey.
• 47 lessons by Ben Werdmuller.
• HTML Zine.
• Just a QR Code.
• Monastery of Sankt Blamensir via Maya.
• Literature Is Not a Vibe: On ChatGPT and the Humanities by Rachele Dini.
• England football team Nazi salute.
• vegan and vegetarian restaurants, ice cream parlors, cafés etc. registered in OpenStreetMap.
• Dicing an onion the Mathematically Optimal Way by Andrew Aquino with Russell Samora and Jan Diehm.
• The "washerwoman" folklore motif in Europe and North America.
• On keeping up with friends and contacts by joelchrono.

The last time I wrote a year in review was in 2019. I ended it with “have a healthy 2020” and we all know how that went. Since it does feel like we’ve been living in hell since 2020 I somehow stopped writing yearly reviews. But I have been itching to capture more of my life and I did have an okay 2025 so here it is.

The struggle is, I am a glass half empty person. I’d hate to sound like I am always moaning and complaining but with the current state of the world, I just can’t justify, nor do I feel content, excited or feel allowed to feel joy. It’s disheartening to feel this hopeless. I don’t want to gaslight myself but I can’t drown myself either. I’m struggling to find a balance.

No sleep

Note: the following section will describe a medical emergency involving a child

TLDR: I haven’t slept properly in over a year because I’ve kept trying to monitor my child’s sleep as they’ve been diagnosed with a type of epilepsy that mostly occurs in their sleep.

I spoke at conferences!

Thankfully I wrote about this already! But yes, I did go around and speak about refactoring and modernising CSS! Which was great yet very emotional for me. Sleeping abroad wasn’t easy and I constantly checked my phone and cameras to check on my daughter.

As if I wasn’t tired enough, I also got a few more side quests and I did two IndieWeb adjacent talks. A shorter version for MKGN and a longer version for LoopConf. Both about using your personal website as a personal online third space.

I think they landed well with people and even some blog posts came out of it which is the absolute dream!

I did enjoy doing these talks and every day I think of things to add to it. This is a topic I can speak from the heart and without slides. I don’t have any speaking plans and I am not planning on writing anything brand new for some time so if this topic is something you’re keen on hearing let me know.

Things I would like to do in 2026

I am attending a few lovely conferences and I have one engagement planned for the year too. But I would like to focus more on writing here, guest writing and playing with video format. Not necessarily to become a “content creator” (ergh) but because the advice to encourage blogging also applies to video content. I do have a degree in video and multimedia and I would like to put it to use.

A new home

If you’ve seen my CSS talk, you know this already. But yes, in late January we’ve moved into a new home and I’ve been the project manager, interior decorator and DIYer (where possible) of the whole place. I love doing things with my bare hands and being away from screens. And to be frank, space and time to not worry about the first topic of this blog post.

This year I am planning to get the bathroom re-done and the patio. I will leave the bathroom with the professionals though.

Still a fan

I always find it so funny when people who have known me for many years comment “you still like The Rasmus??” as if they would ask a man how come they still support the same football team they have since they were a child. Anyway, the band did a tour this year and I was able to go to the meet and greets and in it I explained how they were the inspiration for my karaoke talk that I did in 2022 and 2023. I asked them to sign the lanyard for All Day Hey! where my name shows (evidence!!) and it still had plenty of room for signatures. I didn’t cry but I was so overwhelmed and spoke too fast like a proper dork. It’s so much easier to speak to a crowd of hundreds of strangers!

This was such a highlight for me as I was able to hang out with one of my oldest friends and make new ones.

Miscellaneous notes

I didn’t take enough leave this year and guess what? I felt like absolute shit towards the end of the year. That’s a mistake I won’t make in 2026 and I started my year by planning and booking some leave already.

I was gifted a zookeeper for a day experience and I loved it so much! I fed a rhino, giraffe and elephants (and more but these were the big boys)! Who can say that? (I also cleaned their poop)

I went to the gym at least once a week in 2025 and I know I moan a bit about my goals to the people close to me but I’m actually happy to have settled into a routine. My girl is quite a tall girl for her age and my goal in life is to be able to pick her up and be healthy and fit to be here for her. On the same topic I need to reduce my TikTok and Instagram usage as it is severely damaging how I view myself too.

I tried art classes, more crafts and even visits to museums and this is something I am planning to carry on and increase in 2026. I need to be even more away from screens however I want to find a balance to still engage with people and communities I care about.

For 2026 I just want to be happy, more grateful, content and safe. And I wish that to you too.

I am back from Berlin after spending a few days last week at Beyond Tellerrand where I was a speaker! It was my first time attending as well. Before that, in September, I did the same talk in Freiburg at Smashing Conference.

In both events I gave the talk that I worked on the first half of this year about modernising and maintaining CSS. Now that this is all done, I want to write out all my feelings.

The origin of this talk

Everything I say on that talk is true:

This talk came to my head after returning to work following a year of maternity leave two years ago. That year away coincided with an explosion of new CSS features I’m still catching up on even now.

I was always wondering ”What was the latest approach? How do you build a hero nowadays? What about a card? What had the experts written while I was away?”. So I created this overwhelming pressure that I needed to prove that I “still had it” and that becoming a mother hadn’t somehow diminished my technical skills.

So my return to work became unexpectedly miserable. I was terrified of making mistakes or choosing suboptimal solutions. The blank canvas that once excited me now left me anxious and riddled with decision paralysis.

This is the origin story of this talk. But there was another thought that creeped in: I wanted to be seen as someone who is vaguely professional. I know, I know! I jest on my social media bios. I normally say that I work as a "unprofessional front end developer" but I do wish to feel like I belong. That the respect between me and my peers is mutual and that I am worth something.

Despite being someone who enjoys seeing everyone being their unapologetic self, every once in a while I look at my "unpolished" layout of my blog and feel a little bit insecure. Also, not so long ago, I gave a silly talk about creating an in-browser gamified karaoke where I embraced the cringe and sang to hundreds of people. I suddenly began to feel afraid that I could be typecasted as... too silly. It feels like others do "silly" better than me and I just didn't want to feel like the class clown.

This means that I was out of my comfort zone. I know I am good employee and that sometimes I write and share "serious" and useful things here too but still I had this quiet whisper in my brain saying "who the hell am I to say anything".

As I began the write the talk, I realised that I can't simply go around and say "do CSS like this" because that's not how CSS works. CSS simply works. There's multiple ways of achieving the same visual result and they are all right. So I had to lean in on real life struggles that end up not being code related at all.

So the fear and terror began to creep in... I wasn't sharing innovative and groundbreaking code that would make me look super smart!

I knew I had to tie it to a story - I am not a professional speaker and I don't have a catalog of experience. I've seen lots and lots of talks and I always enjoyed a side story, metaphor or comparison so I leaned into that and attached the story of the current stage of my life: a house renovation.

My innner critic was pulling extra shifts: "Oh dear... this is a bit personal..."

Then I thought: "It's missing some imagery - let me draw things in the only style I know".

"Oh no. Now it looks like my silly blog."

And I became a little bit anxious. Some days I was defending myself "Nope, this is me. It's okay to be me", other days I was lying awake staring at my bedroom ceiling because I was so afraid I would disappoint all the organisers and attendees.

At this point I had to create a rule. No self bad talk until this talk is finished. Detect the thought and drown it. Do the thing my therapist used to nag me about. Turns out it helps.

Eventually, the time to practise with friends came and the first run of it in public happened. And all was fine! The world didn't end!

The support act

When I did my "less serious karaoke talk" at conferences, I felt completely comfortable with it. I was comfortable with being the silly one in a line-up full of people I admire. It's almost like I said to myself "well, they are the smart ones, I am in my lane".

For this talk, every time a new speaker was announced, it was always someone who was incredible, respected and super smart and I always had a racing thought "oh no, who even am I to be there as well". Perhaps it was the famous imposter syndrome people talk about but to me it felt like I didn't belong. I've been attending meet-ups and conferences as a hobby for more than 10 years! It's weird seeing myself in those line-ups and believe that I belong there. It's like becoming a support act for a music festival that you've been attending since forever alongside the big names.

Living in the limbo

I don't know what other speakers do but I never feel like a talk is finished. There's always more clarification or more resources that be added. In fact, this photo from Florian at btconf captures exactly the feeling of limbo, fear and questioning myself and my slides just before I gave my talk.

Photo by Florian Ziegler.

So even though I had my talk "finished" before June, I never felt like I could finally relax. To me, the shift only ended in November. I gave this talk 5 times and in all of them something always changed. Every day I scrolled through my feeds and keep an eye on things that I could improve on my talk. This is quite exhausting. I spent the first 6 months of this year working on it, then the other 5 months were spent sourcing for improvements.

Last Friday afternoon, I had this intense feeling of relief that was so obvious on my face that people commented on it!

What's next?

I don't know but I don't want to force anything. This is a side gig to me and an experience for myself as my current job doesn't require me to do talks. I mean, I always have a talk in my pocket about the IndieWeb if anyone is interested!

I'm sure that during this year I was a fucking pain in the arse to those close to me. I was so afraid and doubting myself that most times I couldn't believe the kind things people were telling me. I asked for reassurance a lot and, for that, I am sorry. I just really really wanted to do well. But I think it is time to fully embrace my silly self and just be that person - even if it is "unprofessional".