The year 2019 started for me a bit unusual than the previous ones. I never expected to get so much attraction on my blog posts that are mostly published here. Had only one trip planned, ended up doing two. Did end up attending a tech conference too. Something when I started my career as a developer I hadn’t thought of.
Six months are already gone, hence, if you are on Twitter, you might be seeing the following tweet at least once a day.
This year so far has been a roller coaster ride. Similar to one I had in January but a bit slow.
Achievements 🎉
This year, I set out some personal goals to achieve. Some came along the way unexpectedly or surprises. For some, I did sweat a lot. Some took more than the usual amount of coffee cups.
Here is a list of goals that I had mind when 2019 came along that I have achieved so far while some of them are still a work in progress and few of them are literally surprises.
✅ Reach 500 subs on the weekly newsletter
🚧 Reach 5k followers on Twitter
✅ Revamp Personal Website
✅ Receive a Patron on Patreon.com (surprise)
✅ 1 Million blog post views
✅ Under 30 days, receive more than 100k views on blog posts*(surprise)*
✅ Reach 1k followers on Instagram
✅ Travel abroad to at least one country, ended up traveling to 5
🚧 Write 50 articles/tutorials on React Native (published 19 so far)
Most of these goals were to be achieved over the span of 6 months and few of them are still work in progress. For me, having personal goals as such, help to move forward in the direction I am ambitious for, that is, to spend a healthy amount of time creating content on development, teaching fellow developers when in need, using the set of technologies or frameworks that I am familiar and work with.
I have made some bad decisions along the way. Some good ones too. Accepting opportunities that I wasn’t ready for did make me see things from a different perspective and helped me grow as a human being.
Attend a Tech conference 👩💻
If your world revolves around software development in general, my suggestion is to attend at least one tech conference in your lifetime. Heck, attend 10 if you want!
The reason I am stating that is again come from a recent and dear personal experience. In the month of April 2019, I attended App.js Conf. A one of its kind. A tech conference for Expo and React Native developers held for the first time in Krakow, Poland. It was my first time.
Twitter is quite famous in the dev world. Many thrive to make connections, many achieve that too. You can get to know almost any new framework being released, and learn it as well through Twitter. You might also be able to make good connections. Get to know people from an unconditional point of view for a long period of time. Open a new website or business. All that is good in my honest opinion.
But attending a tech conference in person is a bit intentional. It will help you reach people on a personal level. I would say, if you are lucky enough to have awesome meetups or a conference happening in your area or city you live in, try attending a few. You never know what lies behind that door.
As I was telling about the conference I attended. I personally met some awesome human beings, who made me realize that there are good and modest human beings on this planet who are willing to help a total stranger or give them company and share moments. I met those whom I admire in the dev world and learned a great number of new things. Also, I never expected someone to recognize me from my Twitter handle. I still don’t believe that, but it happened.
😱
That was my reaction.
I am planning to attend one more either the latter half of this year or early next year.
Writing ✍️
For the majority of the last year, I had stopped writing. I did run a blog for five years writing book reviews, interviewing some well-known authors and manage to be awarded twice as the Best Book Blogs in India. But in the end, I lost much of my interest as I felt there wasn’t much left to do. I slowly moved my passion for writing in the tech world and boy did it open doors for me that I never know existed.
Along the way, I did learn a thing or two on how to promote content without hurting anyone’s feelings, using the internet. I never expected to reach 1 million views on a platform that I have for a little over two years.
I have written for various blogs, magazines, Medium publications. To manage and keep them in one place, I started maintaining a Github repository. You will find all the links 👇
The lesson I learned from this is that if you are passionate about something, can’t stay away from it for a while, and are consistently taking action in that area, you will achieve heights. Passion does help you drive through that prolonged path.
Travel ✈️
Why? Why not save all the 💲for your future self? Why travel at all?
Many of my acquaintances did not know this but since my teenage days, I had been eager to travel. I have been shut until I had to force myself a little to make it happen.
Now, I am in love with it.
We all have our own reasons related to the word “Travel”. Mine is to learn new things, meet new people, have brief moments with a few, or make some connections, visit places that I think are astonishing, manage everything from planning to expenses, food, accommodation and so on, and be myself. Finally, I did manage to travel to five countries including one of the most lavish cities in the middle east and four beautiful European countries that I am still amazed by their beauty and the calmness they possess.
Traveling to different places do have a deep impact on me. There are some important things I learned about myself and especially how I want to take the approach in my career and life in general. And other things that are essential to the places I visited or the people I met along the way.
I do have some future plans for traveling. I want to experiment with it this time, and not just take a vacation, but try to stay longer in one place. It might end up being a fulfilled personal goal that you get to hear about at the end of this year.