Past Year Review (2021)

It’s again that time of the year, the end of it, the moment where we stop, we look back and check how we did. Have we been able to do all the things we wanted to do? Of course not. But what matter most is what has been achieved. Let’s abandon the regrets and let’s focus on what’s next.

Every year is an unknown, I start planning, then something inevitably drifts, but so far I’ve managed to stay on track or at least keep it under control.

In my previous resolution, I’ve outlined my 2021 to be something like this:

• Become father for the second time
• Crawl out of my house (damn you COVID-19) and start doing some exercises.
• Create a couple of workshops
• Crowdfunding and writing v2.0 of 10x SE.
• Launch a Newsletter
• Mentoring
• Obtain certifications about Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes and Terraform.

Did I do all of them? Almost:

• Become father for the second time ✅
  • Super happy with my daughter, she brought lot’s of extra work but most importantly she brought lots of joy.
• Crawl out of my house (damn you COVID-19) and start doing some exercises ✅
  • I failed at crawling out of the house, and I paid the price with a long streak of migraines, although I’ve exercised a lot.
• Create a couple of workshops ❌
  • I tried to do crowdsource campaigns, just for fun, no effort at the end was involved.
• Crowdfunding and writing v2.0 of 10x SE ✅
  • No crowdfunding, but spent a lot of time on the ebook and online course.
• Launch a Newsletter ✅
  • I’ve read skimmed through thousands of articles, then read actually a few hundred and picked the best ones. Every day. For a year.
• Mentoring ✅
  • I’ve managed to start around Q3/Q4 with 2 mentorships, and the best thing is that I’m learning even more!
• Obtain certifications about Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes and Terraform ❌
  • Only obtained the HashiCorp Terraform Associate. Soon I’ll get all of them, but not this year.

This year I’ve stopped the super detailed plan I’ve used in the previous 2 years. Mainly due to my schedule pretty much changing every day with my newborn ?
I’ve just created a yearly schedule in Evernote divided by topic groups (reading, online courses, certifications, exercises, coding, etc).

And my key point was to keep it simple and super flexible:

• I have no pressure whatsoever on completing every item
• I can add/switch/cancel tasks at any time
• Use Thanos Gauntlet whenever I felt overwhelmed, and half the items on the list
• Didn’t track percentage progress
• Just note the date of when I completed the item

Learning more Cloud-Native stuff

I’ve been reading books mostly on Cloud Architectures, Docker & Kubernetes. Yeah, about that, I’ve read a shedload amount of articles on Kubernetes, it was my top item on my to-do list for too long.

I’ve managed to jump into the huge ecosystem, everything started with OVH’s datacenter burning event. I’ve finally created my own clusters and learned tons about Kubernetes. Still, I’m no expert.

Being Fit

No need to hide it, the pandemic took a toll on my fitness status. Not that I have ever been fit. But every day at home, no commute, junk food, no exercise, no walking, I’ve got some extra weight I eventually wanted to get rid of it.
I started on 1st Jan, baby steps, just push-ups. Then I’ve reached momentum and built on top of it, until the point I was tracking every single meal and exercising every day for 30 mins or so (cardio, body-weight, and dumbells), and monitoring my progress every single day.

I’ve managed to achieve all my goals and go beyond ? In 2/3 months I’ve managed to lose over 10kg of extra weight, build up muscle and start to feel a lot better despite the remote working I’ve been doing continuously since March 2020 due to COVID-19.

Mentoring

I’ve jumped into this world, even though in the past I did some sessions, and I’ve joined CodeMentor and MentorCruise. I’m doing right now a couple of mentoring at the same time and it’s been great so far.

I’ve managed to update my book 10x Software Engineer, and also reached over 200 readers! I pushed it further and published a dedicated Academy website with extra content and exercises.

As promised in 2020, I’ve started my own (weekly) newsletter, and made it through a whole year. So, the next plan is to continue on it for quite some time, as it also provides extra content to my 10x students and my mentees?

Freelancing

I’ve started doing some extra random gigs on UpWork, and I finally managed to join Toptal (which is a super cool platform with a great community)!

So, if you ever need some help with your projects you could book me for a quick call ?