“My name is immaterial,” she said.
“That’s a pretty name,” said Rincewind.

-Sir Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

In the last post I made on this little site more than three years ago, I did writeups for the first week of Advent of Code 2019 - very much with the intention of doing writeups for every single problem. As I flippantly alluded in the post, this was as a distraction during a very challenging time for me personally, in the midst of a very challenging time for the entire world.

Things have mostly gotten better than they were in March 2020, both for me and for the world, but I think both came out of that experience irrevocably changed. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that I’ve lived hundreds of years in the past three.

And, while I can’t definitively say the same for the state of the world, I feel that despite everything – I’ve changed for the better. Despite everything, I’m still me.