2019 in the rear mirror

Another new year has just passed us. I hope everyone has taken advantage of the end of year holidays to get together with their loved ones and have a good time! Now that everything is going back to normal, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on last year and on what’s to come in 2020. I’m not a fan of making resolutions in January just to drop them 3 weeks later, but reflecting back is important to learn from our experiences, and now is as good a time as ever to do it! So I encourage everyone to do it. Here’s mine that I’ll share.

26-02-2018: Started a new blog

If you’ve read this far, it means my blog is still running! While I have not posted as much as I wanted, this is by far my biggest writing work since I finished school (yes, I know, I don’t write a lot). And for the first time, it’s on finance, a topic I love but don’t get to talk about very often. It’s one of those weird topics that's much easier to talk with complete strangers on the internet than in person. Don’t get me wrong, it’s possible. But beside with my partner, I’ve only had a few thoughtful conversations about money. More often than not, it derails into complaints about how little money everyone has. Or how real estate is so expensive. Or how real estate is the way to get rich. Also, no one wants to talk about how much they make, either because they think they make too little (and are embarassed) and too much (and are embarassed). You get the idea.

Focused on a new project at my job

2019 was my first full year at my current workplace, and it’s been both exciting and tiring. When I’m not busy working on this blog or petting my cat, I’m a software engineer. I lend my skills to my employer working on their web application. I focused most of the year on a new project that started at the beginning of it, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out even if not everything was smooth along the way. As someone wise once said:

It's not about the destination, it's about the journey stupid.

Or something like that.

Created new apps to automate my life

Since I’m a software engineer by trade, I have the unique opportunity to fix some problems in my life by creating new software. This is exactly what I did last year, by writing multiple small, very focused apps to help me in my everyday life. On top of all the learning, this has allowed me to reduce the time it takes for me to catch up to all the blogs I like to read for example. Or to read the forums I like to visit and get up-to-date. Or to publish this very blog. It may not sound like much, but it has improved my life as I can now focus on what’s important to me. It also calms the perfectionist in me as I can make it exactly as I want it to be, without having to stress about the little details all the time.

If you compare this to 2018, it’s a huge improvements in impact. That year, I focused on building a complex app in the hope of making it my day-job one day, but ultimately decided to stash it away. Even though that went nowhere in the end, it got me my current job so it’s not all negative!

2020 and beyond

After looking back on 2019, it’s becoming clear that what went well was that I managed to focus on small, achievable projects. I plan to do the same this year, while focusing on a very precise topic.

Friends & family

I’m not gonna lie, I’m a terrible friend. I don’t call, don’t return text/emails right away (if ever), and forget about birthdays until the very week before. I’m very grateful for every friend and family I have, and for this very reason I need to get better at showing appreciation for it. If there are any aspect of my life I’d like to change, it’s this right here. But I have not found how yet. Ironically, this is a problem I’ve tried to fix by creating an app for before, but I abandoned it before finishing it. Project for 2020 maybe? We’ll see. I feel like this is not something that can be fixed with software.

Are you like this? I'd love to hear in the comments how you overcame this issue in your life (or tried to).