I have never done this before, but I think having my own blog is a good opportunity to start reviewing my year, in personal and professional environment.
Personal highlights
Coming back to exercise
After more than 1 year without exercising, I went back to the swimming pool. Once my family got vaccinated, I started going to the swimming pool again. I had different pains in my body, and, 2020 caused me a lot of stress because of work and some personal situations. I started once or twice per week, and I finished with 3 seasons per week. Likewise, I am delighted I did it!
Improving my English
This is a goal pending for some years, I could write and read in English without problems, but listening and especially speaking were my weak points. It’s something you can practice, so I started English conversation classes once per week.
Besides, I started watching a couple of series in English with subtitles. I watched the 10 seasons of Friends, and I started Downtown Abbey. I don’t know if I will be able to watch entirely without peeking at the subtitles, but I will try.
A nice tool I am using for checking my posts, emails, etc. is LanguageTool. I got a subscription for 1 year, and I am pleased.
Change in my career
After almost 4 years working in Renta 4 bank, I started searching for a new job. I had always been working in consultancy, and this was my first opportunity with a final client. I never regret my decisions, and with the information I had, it seemed a good opportunity.
After 2 years, I realized that I was stuck in a place with old technology and with no perspective of evolution. I almost changed my job in March 2019, I had a superb opportunity, but then the pandemic started, everything was delayed and when they contacted me again, I preferred not to move in a time.
I thought that working with a final client was the right step, a position stable with a constant salary evolution perhaps, but I realized that we spend a lot of time working, so it is crucial being happy with what you have to do day to day.
Nowadays, for me, it is essential to have the possibility of remote working, to organize my schedule and enjoy as much time as possible with my kid.
Finally, I started as Frontend Developer at Cognizant, I think it is a good opportunity for learning, working in team in international projects and improving my English, so I am very thrilled with the change. At this moment, I am working 100% remote, but in the future I will go a couple of mornings per week to the office.
Covid-19 vaccine
I got vaccinated with Pfizer 💉💉. Everybody is fed up with the pandemic, there is a lot of information, and sometimes we doubt that it will ever end. Now I am waiting for the third dose, but nowadays is difficult to scape from Omicron.
Professional/Work skills highlights
I started 2021 with the objective of learning Vue 3. I created a personal project called financial-bank. I didn’t finish it, but I learnt and played with Tailwind, Vue and Typescript. It’s in develop branch, if I have time in the future I have several things in my head I wanted to apply.
In the last 3 months, I have been learning React. React is one of the most popular frameworks, many people use it, write libraries and articles about it, maybe it will be the most used library soon when jQuery leaves the first place.
I didn’t know anything about React, I try not to drive myself crazy about learning constantly new frameworks. Knowing Angular and Vue was enough for me, but I was assigned to a React project, so here I am, now I have some experience with the big three!
I created some repos and Github (216 contributions in the last year), and I wrote 6 blogs post in 2021. Moreover, I created a theme for VSCode called Oceanic Wind, I love it, you should try it.
Goals for 2022
These are my goals for 2022:
Doing more exercise and gaining a bit of muscle (I think it will help me with some of my chronic pain). I am changing my diet with 8fit and exercising sometimes at home.
Elevating my swimming skills with different kind of workouts. I purchased Garmin Swim 2 to track my sessions. Swimming 3 times per week is my objective.
Reading more. In English and in Spanish, I hope I can read a couple of hours per week.
Getting C1 certificate in English.
Converting myself into a Javascript fullstack developer.
Publishing more posts in the blog.
💪🏻💪🏻