Year in Review: Happy Birthday Kel
Only Kelvin will write a year in review in late February because why not? I didn’t want to write a review for 2021, not because it was a bad year or anything. I did have a lot of lows but I found a way to get out of them with help from good friends. I didn’t write a review earlier mostly because I just couldn't make out the time. Things have since slowed down just as my birthday is around the corner. Moving forward, I think I’ll just write my year in review around my birthdays.
This year I’ll organize my thoughts on the previous year in 3 parts:
- What went well?
- What didn’t go so well?
- What did I learn?
What went well?
First off, my long journey of trying to acquire an education “officially” came to an end. B.Sc in Computer Science in the 💼 on the second attempt! I can’t get into specifics of the first attempt since it’s personal but the second attempt took some time but we finally got it. I’m just happy it’s over now and I can fully turn my attention to things I really want to do. Bye, Uniport!
In terms of software development, things took a while to get going for me over the last year. At this time last year, I wasn’t working full-time/part-time anywhere. In fact, I spent most of the early part of last year doing freelance technical writing. I got a part-time role in the middle of the year and only got a full-time engagement towards the end of 2021. I’m very happy for the full-time engagement because I feel like for once in a long time, I’ve had to step up my technical skills and I’m learning a great deal.
This meant I had enough spare time to devote towards developing some ideas of my own. Some of these ideas I’ve written down for a long time and it was fun to finally start making concrete plans towards developing them. I’ve not had as much time of recent to dedicate to them but I’m working on strategies to free up some time so I can get back to developing them.
The last thing that I spent a good amount of time on last year was understanding my money moves. Money comes quickly but goes even quicker so I had to take time to understand where my money was going. Even though I had been saving before then, I always ended up taking from the savings. There was also the external factor of rising inflation rate. This led to loads of research on creating systems for managing my money. At the end of the day, I ended up stashing some money away using apps like PiggyVest, moving some into foreign currencies that are more stable and a few others methods. I’m much happier with the state of things there now.
What didn’t go so well?
The main thing that didn’t go well for me last year, besides personal challenges, was technical writing. I’ve always felt technical writing is not something I can do full-time because writing in general for me comes with my moods. Most of the time, I don’t want to write or I’ll start writing and loose interest in the piece. So at some point, I couldn’t deliver the quality of technical articles I would like to and just stop writing all together.
While I know I’ll start writing again at some point, it’s not something that is currently in my short term plans so I’ll just have to see how it goes. Maybe I should invest some time to research strategies to into a state of mind that encourages me to write.
What did I learn?
I guess when I reflect on the previous year now, most of the things I’ve learned are about myself. It’s like I discovered an extra layer of my being that is capable of more than I was aware. I’m still learning more about this new layer and I’ll spend the next year developing it.
In terms of software development, I’ve worked with a couple more international teams and I’ve expanded my knowledge of software development and programming skills. I want to keep growing these skills as well over the next year.
That’s pretty much what my year has been like. See you in the next review!
