Reflecting on 2024

It’s that time of the year. I didn’t write much in 2024. I wanted to write only when I had done something worth writing about.

Jan and Feb went by office work e-champs project POC, all by myself. For error handling, I proposed to use the postMessage API of the browser. This required support from a legacy application that we were integrating into the current application using iframe. Unfortunately, my lead was unaware of this work and dismissed it due to various limitations. Eventually leading to the dismissal of the project I guess. Working and managing my home were taking 100% of my time. Any leisure time went into practising dance form for my first-ever performance in a temple. I wanted to dedicate my devotion in the form of dance for my beloved lord Shiva. Honestly, it wasn’t a good experience and I got clarity on many things about myself.

I focused on work and tried to reflect and revise my plans for the year. I realised Terraform or Cloud is not my thing yet. Instead, I started feeling comfortable with Java. I need to keep working using Java to push into my secondary memory. I watched related videos sometimes and mostly focused on work.

We had planned for a month-long stay in Goa this year. I had this fantasy of slow living in Goa, which most people could only dream of. I read a few articles on how people moved to Goa for a year or worked from there for so many reasons like, the affordability it offers, its cuisine, and most importantly living with nature alongside city life. The idea was to make the most of Rihu’s holidays and be close to nature. And a road trip it was. I could write an entire article just describing the road trip experience. We started at the end of April and returned by the last week of May. The Airbnb we booked surprised us with its view and the community space was amazingly peaceful. The Cola beach was just 400mtrs from the place. And besides all this, the Airbnb was inside a gated community with security and a wonderful swimming pool. What more could I have asked? A perfect summer vacation for my child and a lovely experience for us.

I had a perfect plan of how I was going to make it a perfect budget-friendly trip. 1BHK in Airbnb and cooking all the weekdays. We executed as planned. We could manage Rihu with some free games in the daytime, swimming twice a day, and some screen time during our work calls. What a wonderful trip it was. Ah, we made many memories. Met new people, and hung out with some. Explored plenty of restaurants. Amazing trip. However, it wasn’t all roses. We were comfortable and it was going all good for the first two weeks. As I managed to cook as much as possible none of us got sick too. The following weeks got a little dry as we were just three and were missing friends. I tried my best to adapt to slow living. We made sure to visit beaches over weekends. Didn’t miss sunsets. It was for sure a beautiful experience. But if you ask me if I will do it again, I would say not any sooner, maybe after a few years in a different place.

At the beginning of the year, I set a goal to acquire a new skill in either arts or psychology. Rihu had a few more weeks before he returned to school. I did some research and found an online art class that we could join together. It is a great way to develop a strong bond with your child, by learning a hobby together. We had two classes every week. We learned sketching and painting. The best takeaway was perspective. Although Rihu just enjoyed painting classes, he wasn’t much interested in theory or sketching. So we stopped as soon as school reopened to make it less hectic.

I came across a parenting workshop and soon enrolled on it. August and September went to attend these classes. This was much needed for my parenting journey. I became a better person to become a better parent. I must say, it changed me for good and I see my child much happier than ever before. I couldn’t have asked anything more. I started cherishing my child and the time we spent together. The institute certified me as a parent coach. Initially, I was sure that I would be using this knowledge for my benefit. However, I see there is a lot of unawareness in the world. There is this one part of the world struggling to get pregnant and have a child, and there is another part of the world that has kids but is not sure what to do with them and ends up frustrated and unknowingly unintentionally doing a lot of harm for their child and their bond with their child. As I have a full-time job and a family to take care of, I decided not to go with one-to-one coaching. After giving it a lot of thought, I started a new blog and a social media channel to post my thoughts and knowledge. I believe that practising as a coach would keep me updated.

Back in May, I applied for a CFP at pyConf India. The topic I chose was non-technical. I proposed a topic in lifestyle - Integrating a hobby for better work-life balance. In August I got a confirmation that my talk got shortlisted and I would need to do a couple of rehearsals and can buy a speaker ticket. Unfortunately, due to some personal reasons, I have decided to withdraw my proposal. Soon in October I gave a couple of webinars and did a workshop for teachers at a school, only to realise coding and solving technical problems is much easier than solving real personal issues for people. My strengths were in technology and not people. I have around 60 plus posts in that IG account. And I have been posting whenever possible.

In November, I revised my goals again and got back to revising Java Spring, DSA, and Open Source. I got an issue from open-tacos, however, it was already assigned to someone else. I couldn’t stop myself and tried to reproduce the issue on my machine. I also solved the issue and raised a PR, that got merged by the end of the month. It was simple but is my first ever PR that got approved. I have written a detailed article on this, you can check here.

This felt like encouragement and I picked up another issue, which I am hoping to close soon. I was busy with family in Dec and the first two weeks of Jan. Hoping to resume work as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading so far. Happy Learning!