While wishing a happy new year around me, people helped me realised how many good things happened to me this year. Funny enough, while listing my goals for 2019, I found the matching list for 2018 and here is what really happened.
Moving abroad ✅
That’s my biggest accomplishment so far: leaving London after more than 3 years and move to Singapore. It actually took me about 3 months between interviews and visa, but I waited August to be serious about it. I finally moved in on 28th of December (just on time for the new year)
Running major marathons ✅
I started running when I moved in London. Last year, I did my first marathon but thought I could go further and challenged the 6 majors one by my 30s (New York, Chicago, Boston, London, Berlin and Tokyo). I was lucky and got chance to ran Chicago Marathon and Berlin Marathon in 2018.
Learning about Growth Marketing ✅
Couple years ago, I’ve been introduced to growth marketing and that’s something I wish to mix more and more with my daily work as software engineer. Books not being enough, I signed up and paid for a 2 days course to learn more about it. Even if I didn’t get chance to fully apply it to my job yet, it was good enough to try it on side projects which might land somewhere.
Swimming one kilometer ❌
I’m not good swimmer and wanted to fix it. Unfortunately, by staying focus on my running training, and not having an easy access to a swimming pool, I didn’t manage to stick with this one. I feel I’ve got more chance to accomplish it this year now.
Learning new technologies 🤷♂️
This one is probably the hardest one to admit. When I started the year 2018, I listed different technologies I wanted to give a fair try, React Native was one of those. At the end of the year, I don’t know more about it.
However, I become more familiar with reactive programming applied to iOS (RxSwift, RxCocoa), as well as an introduction to machine learning on different side projects and I’m really happy I got chance to start it.
Unplanned opportunities
If those were planned goals, a lot of good things happened were unplanned, like being promoted as senior software engineer and couple months later as acting tech lead. I also helped organising a hackathon, launched multiple sides projects and got more audience on this blog than I was wishing for.
In short, the recipe that worked form is own your time, plan your goals but always leave room for new opportunities.
I believe I would have accomplished anything without people supporting me all along. So thank you 2018 for everything! I can’t wait to see what 2019 has to offer!
Happy new year!
Photo by chuttersnap