I’d like to take some time reflecting Back on 2023, which was by far one of the most challenging years for me (mostly challenging in a good way 😄). A couple of years ago I read a book called Atomic Habits (actually listened to it, it was an audio book 😄), and it talked about the importance of visualising your progress on a certain habit. From there I decided to have a Kanban board where I add, remove, and track the progress of my quarterly/ yearly decisions.
This post serves a couple of purposes:
- It’s another way of visualizing the progress for my future self. When I go through turbulent times I can always remind myself with the good that came out of the challenges.
- I hope it serves as an inspiration for someone who reads this.
Reflecting back on 2023, there a couple of goals, learnings and challenges
Goals ⚽
Here’s the summary of my 2023 goals in chronological order
Get a B1 certificate 📜
It’s no secret that the German language isn’t one of the easiest to learn for an array of reasons (time to dedicate, prior-familiarity or the lack of it with learning languages, and simply not having an actual motive to learn 😅). If you have a demanding full-time job and an introverted personality you probably can relate. I have to say here that I had lots of self-doubts that this goal will be possible, especially passing the speaking part of the exam.
In 2023 I set a goal for myself that I would like to have the B1 certificate, as it’s an important requirement for long term stay in Germany. To my surprise, setting a clear goal and methodically working towards that goal actually made me focused, and able to achieve more !
If you have tried to study for a standard exam before, you’ve probably noticed that passing the exam requires a certain kind of skills that’re not exactly what you need for the domain you’re studying fore anyhow ! (think problem solving Leetcode quizes vs what you actually do on a tech job). I actually thought it’s the same with the German exam, meaning passing the exam won’t really up my spoken German. To my surprise (again), I’ve noticed that my conversational German got way better than it used to be (it’s still absolute crap, and I still struggle a lot when I speak, but huge progress nevertheless 😀).
I made a YouTube video (a really bad one, it was my first video 😀) about my experience, which take us to the next goal.
Make Online Content 🤓
Teaching is one of the activities that I like pretty much, but I didn’t know what I can do to develop my skills there. In the beginning of last year it hit me, I could create YouTube videos to help others who are looking for random content.
My immediate follow-up thought was, who gives a crap ? 😅 everything to talk about is already there, multiple times. I read about that concern, and I concluded that it’s still a useful thing to do for a couple of reasons:
- I don’t have to be Pablo Picasso kind of artist to start sketching for my own fun. Same for content creation, I think content creation is fun, and it is okay if that’s my biggest motivation 😄
- There are different styles of learning and teaching. There are billions of people living on the planet with a lot of different preferences, some like in-detail explanations, and some like short and quick ones. If folks on my Linkedin network or random people on the internet find my content useful, that’s a huge win !
- Teaching is the best way to learn about some topics. I learned a ton of things while researching for blog posts and videos.
- It’s terrifying to make mistakes publicly, but that’s a great way to deal with one’s ego and normalize the idea that making mistakes is okay (of course mistakes are not created equally, but I don’t think my content will ever harm anyone 😄)
I also realized that while I have thoughts and stuff to talk about, they don’t always fit in a YouTube video. I then decided to work on this blog. I’ve tried blogging in the past, but didn’t really have a direction. There’s a second reason behind blogging, which is it’s much easier to make; you just need a computer, but for YouTube videos you need to record the videos, edit the videos, try to have a decent lighting, and a place to record the videos (last two points are REALLY difficult for me currently because of the Berlin housing situation 😭).
Get married ! 🤵
The full context for this one probably needs many posts on its own 😄, but the gist of it is … we found each other and decided to not let go 🙂
It wasn’t very straightforward to get all paperwork sorted out, I’m Egyptian, she’s Turkish, we live in Germany, and we got married in Denmark (story here). We had lots of unknowns, weird paperwork to sort out, a housing situation, a turbulent financial year, and a cat that demands treats non-stop 😄
Regardless of the challenges, by far it was one of the best decisions I’ve made 🙂
Say “No” less 🙈
I think it’s self-explanatory 😅
Eat Healthier 🥕
Not in the sense of becoming Instagram fitness influencer fanatics or calculating the macros for each meal, but to pay more attention and be more mindful to what I eat. The line between moderation and obsession is fine, but it’s a skill to develop.
There’s a subgoal to this one, which is “gain weight”, I’d always struggled with being underweight, and this year there was definitely some progress 😄
Work Challenges
This year has been by far one of the most challenges years career-wise, good and bad.
Layoffs 🥲
It was the year of massive layoffs, people losing their jobs left and right, an unprecedented level of uncertainty about the tech market, and my team. After a couple of layoff waves, the company announced the closure of Berlin office by the end of 2024. I was lucky enough to be one of the 100-ish people to stay after that announcement, but this massive layoff still left its mark.
Previously, I got a feedback that I should work more on dealing with ambiguity, this year I feel I done my fair share of ambiguity handling 😄
Rising Responsibility and Successful Delivery 📈
This year was also the first year for me as officially a senior software engineer, and I was tasked by the successful delivery of a huge migration project that spanned a couple of domains. The deadline was really tight, but with proper requirement understanding, planning, and execution we made the seemingly impossible possible 🙂
Gained technical knowledge
Domain Driven Design 📚
This year I managed to finally read the Domain Driven Design book, which I meant to read for a long time. It’s for sure a really good read and it makes your code much organized. I wouldn’t stick to every possible concept and practice there, and I have to say I skimmed through lots of the content, but all and all makes sense 😄
Kotlin 👨💻
I’ve always wanted to use different programming languages in production, but I didn’t have the opportunity. In 2023 I got the chance to migrate some Java code to Kotlin code, and it was AWESOME 😀
Kotlin is a very fun and powerful language to code in, and for sure I want to do more in the future with it.
Data Engineering Nanodegree 🎓
Most of what I’ve been doing professionally since 2021 revolves around data engineering. We offer data services to different corporate units. I decided to gain better understanding of the domain. I think it’s crucial for a software engineer to have at least some understanding for the domain they’re working in, not just writing code around it.
In 2023 I did the Data Engineering with AWS nanodegree as an efficient way of having an understanding of the domain. I wasn’t wrong 😀
I struggled a bit with following the course because it was pretty old (from 2019) with outdated parts and not updated content, but otherwise it was efficient and really fun to do the degree’s projects.
Not to brag, but I also finished it two months before the deadline. I’m writing that as a note to my future self when reading this post again.
What’s next for 2024 ? 🗓️
No solid plan yet 😅
Broadly speaking, I want to take more care of myself. I want to work on my life’s social aspects more, and I want to do more sports. I’m an avid listener to The Happiness Lab podcast, and a subject that comes over and over is the importance of doing physical and social activities for your wellbeing. This is extra challenging for me as an introvert, but for sure it’s a challenge worth the effort.
Conclusion
2023 was a rough year, with lots of changes and challenges. However, where there’s a challenge, there’s almost always an opportunity 🙂
For 2024 my overarching goal is to find balance between personal wellbeing, social life, family life, and work life.
note: god I love DALLE-E image generation 😂