Well, this year, this blog has been quiet. There are more Instagram cross-post here than there are new text-based posts in this blog. There are only 4 non-photo posts. It’s not without effort though, I have 12 more posts in the drafts! The reason of not publishing them is just because I lost interest before I finished writing, and sometimes after I finished, I found that the central argument was quite weak and didn’t deserve publication.
Anyway, this post is about reviewing 2019, not to rant about why I published so little.
Work
This year, the company moved to a new building and the headcount just exploded! There’s so many staffs now that even the new cafeteria wouldn’t be able to hold all of us.
2019 was the year where coding time at work become really precious. Being a tech lead means that I was involved in a lot of meetings and all non-coding works. I was still contributing to the team, but now in different capacity.
Even for coding, a lot of the time, it was not for coding a big feature anymore. It’s now either platform-level contributions (recent examples are: revamping the whole Redux store management, extracting some tracking codes out to a web worker, rewriting a DASH video player), bug fixing stuffs, and tiny features. I guess one exception was when the team was handed over a library and I dived into it and study the intricacies.
There are a some members who left the team for various reasons. There are also some new members in the team. There are things that I would like to improve in the team and 2020 focus will be on this.
One big highlight of 2019 is that there are so many trainings from company that I joined this year, mostly focusing on leadership and all the topics surrounding it. Every time I was out from the session, I felt more enlightened than before.
People
I met up a few times with old friends on various occasions this year. I think, on average, it was once every month.
Most of the new people I met this year are new colleagues. The whole Web Front-End team is now so big that I wouldn’t be able to get to know everyone personally anymore.
I also spoken in Geekcamp 2019 for the first time! Here, I met a few people and one of them are actually an enthusiast of Web Audio who given me some tips and reasons why Web Audio works that way.
I went back to my hometown in February and May to visit my family; and in November, we went together for a Buddhist pilgrimage tour in India and Nepal
Health
I was sick twice, once in March and another time in October. They didn’t affect my blood donation schedule, but my trip to India did. Because of that, this year, I have only donated three times.
This year, as much as possible, I’ve been staying over at my uncle’s place so that I could swim more vigorously than ever. 3 km on Saturday evening and another 3 km on Sunday morning. Each session took 1.5 hours! Every time the weekend ends, some part of my muscle hurts so I took it as a good sign that my exercise is intense enough.
My body weight has risen again, mostly because I’ve been snacking quite a lot in workplace and also on weekends. Other than that, my practice to take less rice still persists.
Conclusion
Let’s end with what I hoped 2019 will be in “2018 in review“
- Be more social: on average, I have at least went out once every month to meet up with old friends, but other than that, the new people I met are mostly new colleagues, and even though time spent on social media has decreased initially, it has risen again
- Maintain health of both body and mind: my sleep cycle has been slightly shortened due to my growing interest in reading, and playing games, I’ve still exercised regularly, but haven’t eaten less unhealthy food.
- Read more non-fiction books: I’ve read a lot of non-fiction books! I’ve registered to be a library member so I could borrow even more books.
- Start and finish a medium-scale side project: I believe Nikku counts as one, I spent my whole April for this project.
So yeah, some are achieved, some are not, but no worries.
Some hopes for 2020:
- Grow my knowledge.
- Current work is related to Web Front-End. I’d like to either widen my knowledge to either outside Web or outside Front-end, just for fun.
- Read books about science, just because it is so fun!
- Contribute to Wikipedia ;)
- Maintain health of body & mind.
- Maintain good exercise, sleep, and eating routines.
- Maintain people relationship.
- Keep in touch with friends and family.
- Plan out 2020s
- …
Happy new year 2020!