The words 'difficult' and 'hard', are relative words. The year of 2020 presented a challenge for everyone across the world. This post is not about how the year was for the world, this is about how it was for me. Without the pandemic, it still would've been difficult.
2020 Highlights
The pandemic happened. This made everything take longer to do. Our family wasn't able to get the support from our social circles that we would've normally had. Any exciting or joyful moments that we had last year, like having a baby, were dampened.
We welcomed our new baby girl to the world. She's delightful. I could go on about how great she is, but the thing that sticks out the most about her is how she gets excited about almost everything. She particularly likes to see the inside of the fridge at the moment. As for the birth, it was a very cold event. I wasn't able to accompany my wife during the birth, so I had to sit outside like it was the 50's. Same sleep loss though. I ended up crushing the driver side rear view mirror of my car while attempting to back out of the hospital parking lot. I parked in the underground parking and beside a cement column. I never thought I would hit something as obvious as a giant cement column, but when you consistently lose a lot of sleep, anything is possible.
Bought a new (potentially forever) house. I say this is our potentially forever house, because we never know what may happen in the future. Otherwise, we don't plan on moving again. This house has all the space we need, it's in a great neighbourhood, and I finally have a home office again. It only took 5 years, but I got it back. As for getting the house, the process of finding the house up until closing the deal, challenged my personal beliefs about life. There were a lot of serendipitous moments during the whole event. I even had a strange feeling about the house, which I normally don't get or even recognize. I look at things in a very logical way, but I couldn't help feeling like something was pushing us towards this house. I guess I'm trying to say that if someone asked me if I believe in fate, then I would say possibly for some things. Why a house? I'm not sure if I'll ever find out.
First time (and most likely last time) we experienced selling our house. We both thought this was a weird thing to go through. We make our house look as presentable as possible and then invite people to look around and imagine themselves living in it. This experience was particularly hard, because we had to list our house within a week of buying our new house. Since we bought a new house first, we didn't want to take any chances of not being able to sell our house for a good price. At the time, the market was hot. It seems the pandemic had the opposite effect of what everyone thought might happen. My theory is that sellers could always postpone selling their house in order to reduce their chances of getting covid (COVID-19) from strangers stepping into their home and touching things. Buyers on the other hand are looking to buy and can limit themselves from getting exposed, by either being very cautious or just not seeing as many homes. Either way, they know what they are walking into. Sellers on the other hand don't know what a potential buyer is doing in their home and they have to trust that the real estate agent and the rules provided by the government are being followed. Given how the government handled the pandemic so far, I would think that those who are cautious would postpone selling their house. Therefore, you will end up having more buyers than sellers. Anyways, selling the house went well.
Officially took a position of leadership in my professional career. This ended being a bigger deal than I thought. An opportunity for a Development Lead (or Lead Developer) came up in my company and I pursued it. Although I didn't think it would be that much of a stretch from my current role as a Full Stack Developer, but I was grossly mistaken. Nevertheless, I'm enjoying the position and the challenges that it presents. I love challenges, because they force me to grow. That's why I never throw out leftover birthday cake.
Got a taste of remote work and I liked it. Remote work is here to stay, but it's not for everyone. This ultimately boils down to who you are as a person and what conditions make you effective.
My thoughts on last year's wrap up
I can't believe I wrote about a cough that I had in my 2019 year end review before anyone knew about COVID-19. I wonder if a whole bunch of people had it and didn't know, but if that were true, you would have seen more people in the hospital around that time, so it probably wasn't COVID-19.
I go home for lunch, just about every day now.
Ever since I stopped commuting I haven't been listening to the Philosophize This! podcast as much.
Seems like life was hectic during the last wrap up. I suppose that's how life's going to be right now, especially during a pandemic.
2020 Goals Achieved
Finish at least one personal web application. Attempted
- This one is a tough one to crack, because I am lumping in learning new tech and techniques with this process as well.
Finish at least six books that I started. No Attempt
- I don't really like this goal, because I usually pick up books to help me with some sort of problem or challenge. It's also possible that I'm reading boring books.
Keep in touch with my family and friends at least once every two months. No Attempt
- This didn't work, because I didn't bother making a system. I'm making a system this time around.
Exercise at least three times a week. No Attempt
- I got super busy, but this also boiled down to not having a system.
Improve my conversational Spanish. Read at least 30 minutes a week and converse (or listen to spanish) for at least 30 minutes a week. No Attempt
- This one is hard, because it's more reading I don't necessarily want to do. I'm essentially saying, "My goal is to work more".
I don't know. No Attempt
- I wrote this, because I didn't have time to finish my writeup last year. I was supposed to come back to finish it up, but then I was whisked away by life.
Goals for 2021
- Create at least one technical written tutorial.
- Create at least one technical video tutorial.
- Create at least one technical audio tutorial.
- Develop a system to keep in touch with my family and friends.
- Exercise at least two times a week.
- Finish at least one personal web application.
- Blog at least once a week.
- Finish reading six books.
- Make my personal site more interesting than last year.
- Make a better format for "My Year of XXXX" review blog post.