\ P.S: Not a technical article 😅*

Happy New Year 🎉 💫

• Looking Ahead: Honestly, I don’t know what’s next because I had a skeleton of what my 2023 will look like and that didn’t include travelling about 33,000 miles across the world or not reaching some goals I had set. As a result, I won’t be guessing what’s on my Bingo card this time. Instead, I have noted a few things I want to achieve; hopefully, that will keep me afloat in my survival mode.

• Change: As humans, we tend to evolve based on the environment and circumstances in which we find ourselves and I got a lot of exposure in different environments. It’s like I had an upgrade to the old me because I quickly had to adapt to favourable and unfavourable situations; that’s part of growth.

• Bad and Hard Times: I experienced a lot of downtimes more than the previous year. I unplugged from many activities and stayed away from situations that didn’t give me positive vibes; other times, I didn’t want to feel like I was drowning so I stayed away. Also, I had that feeling of being lost in my path/life, not getting a lot of opportunities I worked hard towards, stagnation in writing, a decrease in my engagements online, and some experiences that I honestly shouldn’t have gone through and the like. I concluded that every experience is valuable; that is part of the learning and evolving process.

• Good Times: I previously mentioned down times but there were silver linings in those dark clouds which shined hope on those gloomy moments. I explored beautiful places, sampled new foods and desserts, and met new and old people.

On the flip side, I realized there is no place like home; I missed home so badly. My small circle showed up and out for me; I’m immensely grateful. I also gained new skills like extensive research into funding, technical knowledge and other financial knowledge.

• Mind Over Matter: Trusting my gut in 2023 saved me a lot; I kept swerving things hurled in my direction by listening to my instinct. There were close shaves but kaishh* — God is awesome ❤️
  Another thing I realized is I constantly have to be my advocate because no one can genuinely put you out there as you would; no one can be “You” like You.

• People: Handling people and learning to be emotionally intelligent is a top skill I hope to master because sometimes people will take advantage of you and try to “finish you” but you still need to play your cards right. Being the nice, helpful, go-to person and the like has its ups and downs but I got to see more of its downs which sucked. I sometimes replay situations to understand how things could have gone better, how things could have gone differently or try to rationalize the thought process behind actions but that didn’t make sense(to me) — we move regardless.

• Tech Explorations: This year, I will be refreshing my knowledge on Programming Fundamentals because it has been a while since I did that, looking at Backend/DevOps, exploring DevRel more, and filling knowledge gaps in Payment Systems (For some weird reason, I feel I need to fill in missing knowledge in that sector so please send resources if you have or let’s hop on a call to discuss if you know a lot). I will be finding out more about System Architecture, Security, JS Libraries(I have seen pretty cool ones eg. one for animations), more article writing etc. I will do my best to go in hard and learn more because each day is another opportunity to get closer to achieving the status of a world-class techie.

• Community: I will continue contributing, building and supporting Open Source communities, events and tech initiatives. Some tech initiatives I drafted long ago have been delayed for months(fear is quite interesting); I hope that will scale out smoothly — taking one day at a time.

• Mentorship: I realized I had some fallthroughs with consistent mentoring or guiding because I didn’t have a proper structure and the feedback process wasn’t that great so I will set up Calendly slots every quarter within the year to help out with that.

I hope for the best this year and all the best too.

Stay safe.

kaish** — slang to show extreme excitement