”You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
–Mae West
Intro
When I sat down to write this year’s wrap up blog post, I realized how much I enjoy being alone. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still a social being, enjoying the company of others. But perhaps the years in relative isolation (re the Pandemic) have changed me? Interestingly enough, it looks like many – perhaps even a majority – of the folks I query on the topic of ”home or office?” are enjoying the privilege of working from home, not having to commute. Anyway. Having a few days off between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Well deserved (again, I like to think). It’s been a busy fall. Busy year in fact. More about this later.
The official Kingstedt 2022 list
If you don’t like reading, this is not the post for you. I suffer from being verbose. In most respects. I’ve sort of given up on trying to be more to the point. As a service, I’m providing a comparatively short list summarizing the year to make it easier for those of you who prefer headlines, videos and Twitter-like messages.
- Year ranking: probably only a 2 (on a scale of 10). It’s hard to warrant a year with so much grief and hardships anything else. The war in Ukraine and the resulting economical downfall overshadow more or less everything else.
- Travels: Yes. We did travel. Murcia (Spain) in March. Pescara (Italy) in July. And finally Tel Aviv (Israel) in November just to mention some excursions. All three venues provided interesting new impressions and experiences.
- Family and Friends: In February John, Dagny and Nancy moved to the nearby suburb Örby after having landed the winning bid for a 4 room apartment. In March, Otto went to Romania to bring home Karina, an Ukrainian war refugee. Karina is since living with Otto in his small house in Huddinge. We buried our mom Kay in January. The loss of both parents last year is obviously a source of recurring grief. Monica’s mom Kerstin (turning 93 in January) is however doing well, still agile enough to bounce up and down off the floor when playing with grandchild Nancy…Amazing and inspiring. ”She’s going outlive us all!” is a commonly used phrase in our household. Nancy, four working on five, is the radiant star of the family. Never stops to surprise us with innovative and age defying stunts. Having Nancy do my nails is just one of her many skills that I’ve come to appreciate this past year.
- Sports & health: The trend from previous years is unaltered; the gap between me and the rest of the family continuous to grow when it comes to physical capacity. Not that I mind it that much. But it’s frustrating to run all out when Monica is claiming that ”this was a nice jog”… :-). Well, being able to run, at all, is great given the problems I’ve faced this year. Asystole (cardiac arrest) in March, resulting in a pacemaker being implanted. Followed by my sixth (seventh) Catether Ablation in June. Honestly, I’m only jogging out of habit. It’s not enjoyable. At all. But the force of habit is strong and the overall resulting feeling (after a workout session) still outweighs the negatives…The rest of the family? Monica is a power force to recon with in the W60 age category. In fact, she’s still racing competitively in open classes. Otto: trained well during the winter and early on in the season. Set an indoor deaf WR at 3000 meters (8.18), and placed 3rd at 5000 meters in the Deaflympics in Brazil in May. Unfortunately Otto then suffered a series of injuries that hampered him during the peak season. Came back strong for the Swedish XC champs and has since been training well, consistently turning in 180-200 K weeks. Otto has continued to study, adding web programming skills on top of his previous graphic design skills. John: enjoyed a great track season with PR’s across the board (29.14 / 10 000 meters and 14.10 / 5000 meters). Of late, he’s been struggling with injuries and illness. But he’s definitely improved greatly this year. We’re confident that his hair WILL be cut next year (re the promise not to cut the hair before John manages to do a sub 14 minutes 5 K). John is also successfully working as a personal running coach and is doing the ”Spring Snyggt with Jesus & Manne” pod cast with friend Manne Forsberg. ”Spring Snyggt” is one of the most popular running theme podcasts in Sweden, with a growing number of listeners not only in Sweden but also in Norway.
- Work stuff’: In February, we decided to sell our company (Mjukvarukraft) to Iver, an IT-company focusing on (thus far) infrastructure, Cloud and Cybersecurity. After six year as an CEO, I’ve since stepped down and is now the ”team coach” for my colleagues. ”Team coach” – a fancier name for middle manager (I have yet to take up padel tennis, the craze of late in Sweden)…Not that I mind. Never been driven by the notion of doing a career. In fact, in theory I was looking forward to perhaps taking it at bit easier. In reality? It didn’t happen. Been working more and harder than for many years, mixing management stuff with sales and working as a consultant (doing tech PM work for one of our clients). Sigh. Well, I’m less than two years from retiring. I guess it’s a matter of ”hanging in there”. Luckily enough, I enjoy my job. IT is in my view the best vertical to work in, at least if you thrive on change.
The year
January – March
Buried mom. Losing both your parents, in the same year too, obviously triggers thoughts and makes you ponder on your lethality. It’s inevitable. Still. I’m happy that my parents led a long and happy life.
Grinded through January (January – April are often referred to as the ”Oxen Weeks” in Swedish; the time of the year when you don’t get a break but typically keep your head down and work…just work). February: Russia began it’s ”military operation” in Ukraine. We’ve seen the signs since the invasion of Crimea in 2014 – without doing anything. Russia sadly enough has always been and will most likely remain a power that will do anything to ”protect” Mother Russia. This doctrine entails keeping a number of satellite nations outside the Russian borders in order to ensure buffers that will help in the protection of Russian territories. Absurd? You bet. But this has been part of the Russian strategy for centuries. With short breaks in between.
Otto visited Odessa last fall and met with Karina, a young promising Ukrainian athlete. When the war begun, Otto obviously were in frequents contacts with Karina to make sure that she and her family were fine. Intense contacts ensued and in March Otto, Karina and her family finally agreed to let Karina begin the hazardous journey to Sweden as a war refugee. Otto hired a driver to take Karin to Romania, where Otto met up. Everything went fine and after long journey back to Sweden, Karina – who is hearing impaired – has now settled in, learning Swedish sign language and Swedish (written and as well as spoken).
In March Monica and I took a week off and went to Murcia, Spain via Alicante. The weather? Not so good…On our way to the coast we noticed that the sky had changed color to an odd orange hue. Quite disturbing. And, we later found out, quite dangerous too! We inadvertently were exposed to the aftermath of storm Celia, bringing Sahara sand particles north into large parts of Europe.
In spite of the inclement weather, we enjoyed our stay. My running form had quickly deteriorated though and Monica found herself running alone while I was sweating away at a nearby gym on the elliptical (forced to wear a face mask!). I also experienced some pretty scary episodes of near fainting, even when driving (Me: ”I think I’m going to faint”, Monica: ”that’s no good” :-)). When we got back home I was admitted to the ER and found out why my form was worse than ever; I was diagnosed with heart failure and asystole (cardiac arrest). The heart stopped for as much as 8 secs at a time during the onset of asystole. The fix was to equip me with a pacemaker that will restart my heart when/if my heart stops. Great going science! (I was also administered medication to adress the heart failure condition).
April – June
In April, we celebrated our last post-monthly-meeting-dinner at our favorite local restaurant, Texas Longhorn. Fortunately, we’ve found another Texas Longhorn near our new offices in Solna where we can enjoy our monthly dinners.
In May, Otto attended the ”Deaf Olympics” (Deaflympics) event in Caxias, Brazil. Otto was unable to repeat the success at the deaf Athletic World Championships in Lublin (Poland) last year, but still managed to secure a bronze at 5000 meters.
After a pretty poor winter (if you like snow and cold weather), we finally got to enjoy some (relatively) warm temps, allowing us to run on the abundance of trails near our home in Huddinge.
Finally things were (sort of) getting back to normal. Friends who had been isolated and were forced to refrain from social events during the pandemic were finally able to catch up on things. Attending a birthday party with a friend who turned sixty three years ago with the rare chance to work up a sweat on the dance floor was super fun.
Summer came in June. JeanClaude, our cat, enjoyed the scenery from our patio.
I also did my sixth (or possibly seventh) catether ablation to remedy the arrhythmia problems that once again returned late 2021. The procedure was successful and I have thus far not experienced any episodes of atrial flutter, tachycardia or atrial fibrillation. Keeping my fingers crossed that the ticker will stay in sinus rhythm now…. Hopefully for the rest of my life.
July – September
Finally. Summer break. The vacation was spent on Singö (where I share summer homes with my siblings), just hanging out at home and doing yet another trip to Pescara, Abruzzo (Italy).
We also did some boating. Both with our own small vessel as well as by taking the ferry from Grisslehamn to Ekerö, one of the Åland islands (Finland).
In July, we finally made it back to Pescara, Abruzzo. Via a hot Rome. This time, we opted to use the bus service from Rome to Pescara (a good choice). The days in Pescara were filled by running, chilling on the beach and bicycling. We also got to hang out with our Italian friends Rosario and Antoinette. Unbeknownst to us, we had by chance happened to rent a place just 200 meters from where they live in Pescara which made for some great socializing!
In an attempt to show Karina something besides just the Stockholm area we also did a road trip to Småland and our Växjö friends Mona and Lars, who are the proud owners of a fantastic summer home on Öland. Lars and Mona highlighted some Öland features thus far not explored. We also stayed a night at the Kosta Boda Art hotel where we all got to blow our own glass (albeit with some assistance…) and visited with friends in Växjö.
The final weekend of summer, we went to the island of Utö in the Stockholm archipelago to meet with friends Johan and Inger, who annually are renting a small cottage on Utö. They took us on a great trail run.
Late in August John did a serious attempt to break 14 minutes at 5000 meters. It looked really good but at the end John had to settle for a PR. Next year…
In August I was invited to my life’s first book release by media profile & author Nisse Edwall. Nisse has written a book on the theme of ”turning 40 – what is it like for men?”. I was interviewed by Nisse when he researched for content (I’m not sure if my input did in fact make into the book, but perhaps I still inspired Nisse somehow, who knows…).
In September we got to celebrate no less than three birthdays:
- Nancy: turning big four
- John: turning big three oooo
- Karina: turning big two o
Of the three, I believe that John probably was the only one who experienced some sort of life crisis. Especially before the birthday. He has since reconciled himself with realization that he’s no longer ”just out of school” (sort of).
October – December
In October I had the pleasure of visiting Christian and Christoph at Qubiq in Hamburg (Germany) to exchange ideas, experiences and visions with them and discuss how we could collaborate more. Inspiring.
Note-to-self: you’re loosing steam! Keep it short(er) dammit! Next year, I’ll use Twitter (if, indeed, Twitter still exists next year…).
Time to close down the summer houses on Singö. With alarmingly risen costs for electricity, we shut down everything that we possible could without compromising the infrastructure of the houses…
On the third attempt (true story) we finally made it to Israel in November. We enjoyed Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, visiting the ”must see” sights in Jerusalem, but mostly just walking (and running) around Tel Aviv. Sure, Israel turned out to be super expensive (Tel Avis is apparently one of the cities with the highest cost of living in the world). But we decided to ignore the fact that our Shekels didn’t last long. And instead opted to just have fun.
So. 2022 came and went. I personally look forward to 2023. Not that the forecast promises much to look forward to…My expectations are:
- That the war in Ukraine will end
- That my family will continue to do well, stay healthy and prosper
- That the excessive use of different kinds of treatments for the ominously growing wrinkles will finally bear fruit
- That my physical decline might slow down and that I once again can run effortless
I’m (in theory) now a little bit more than a year from retirement. Do I look forward to a life as a senior citizen? As a matter of fact – yes! I’d like to think that I’ve done my share of contributing to the prosperity of Sweden.
Well. I DID warn y’all. I’m confident that only a few of the potential post viewers have made it all the way to the end. If you did: thanks!
See you next year!
Miscellaneous pics
