2019 was the best year of my professional life thus far and I’m so grateful for that. There were so many pinch-myself moments and I’m still in awe of how so many things turned out to be.
Two of my biggest achievements this year were tackling imposter syndrome and overcoming my anxiety about being in public spaces. I put in a lot of effort and learned a lot in my field which helped me overcome some serious case of imposter syndrome! I know it is something that never fully goes away, that it comes and goes but I did tackle that well this year 💪
One of the goals I set for 2019 was to be active in the developer community and I’m so happy I did it as much as I could. In the past, I was never able to go to meetups/events due to my anxiety and I always used to turn down such opportunities but this year I went head first and attended as many meetups/events/conferences as I could. And let me tell you that was the best decision ever!
Writing
The biggest thing that influenced my year was me writing on dev.to. It opened up many opportunities for me and I came across so many amazing people because of it. My posts on dev has more than 300k views! What! 🤯 It makes my day whenever I read a comment or an email or a twitter DM saying they’re thankful they learned something from my blog.
I’m so grateful for this community 💜. Kudos to the entire DEV team for building such an amazing platform!
I also received my first paid writing gig this year! I never imagined when I started writing at the start of this year that this could even happen.
To be honest I didn’t write as many posts as I would have liked to but I will continue to write as much as I can going forward.
Career
This year was full of learning. I deep-dived into JavaScript, learned a lot about Accessibility, really understood how React works and polished my skills in CSS. I worked on some small projects purely for learning purposes (check out github). I did start work on one or two side projects but did not finish any of it, will continue to work on those in 2020. Or maybe I’ll start a few new ones, I’m not sure 😅
I also finished Hacktoberfest! Looking forward to contribute more towards OSS.
I spoke at my first ever major conference at ReactIndia. It was an amazing experience and I feel so honoured that I got to share the stage with such amazing people of the tech community.
Life
I don’t really write about my personal life but here’s a brief overview in the grand scheme of things -
- I started bullet journaling this year and it has been a game-changer for me. I will continue this in the future.
- Travelled solo halfway across the world!
- Travelled to a few more places with friends, the best one was the trip to McLeod Ganj. Have you been there? You should.
- Made some good new friends.
- Did rock climbing, rappelling and zip-lining for the first time.
- Did not read as many books as I wanted to.
- Started to re-learn French.
Onwards 2020
I’ll be moving to a new place (details to be disclosed soon 😊) This will be a big change and will shake things up a lot so I’ve not set any goals that are set in stone. I’ve left room for a lot of experimentation and I’ll adapt as things happen.
But I do have goals that I wish to see through-
- I want to continue writing about all the things I’m learning
- I want to speak at more events and the focus will be on small local events
- I want to read at least 14 books
Happy new year folks! 🎉 Looking forward to 2020! Share your year in review and 2020 goals with me @_ananyaneogi.
I also want to mention that success doesn’t always mean visible success! It’s ok if you didn’t tick off your 2019 goals checklist or you don’t have a long list of “achievements” for the year. Sometimes life gets in the way and things happen so be kind to yourself. 💜 Tangible achievements are not always the true measure of success! Celebrate your wins no matter how small because small wins accumulate and become big one day. Get ready to take on life in the new year even stronger 💪