Hindsight 2018 edition

2018-12-28 #personal

Well since you asked, Mohamed 🙃, a little retrospective on this past year…

I realized my passion lies with designing and building interfaces. I don't care about the language; PHP, JavaScript, CSS and HTML are all equally fun for me to be working with. As long as I'm actively shaping to the end user experience.

I wrote 11 full-length articles on my blog. Unfortunately one shy of my one-per-month goal, although I suppose this post makes 12!

I started a newsletter to share links. Soon after that, I stopped the newsletter and started sharing links on my blog instead ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ However, I'm very happy with the current state of my site, and I'm glad it also became a place to share things with more context and longevity than Twitter.

I got started with public speaking. I spoke at the unconference at PHP Benelux, and won a prize for it being the best unconference talk (hooray!) I also spoke at the Full Stack Antwerp meetup. I enjoyed both experiences, despite the fact that preparing a talk requires an excruciating amount of work, but I'm still undecided whether it's something I want to pursue more of in the future.

I got better at organizing, both for work and life in general. Things is a godsend!

I got a dog! Probably the best and most influential decision I've made in my personal life this year. What a lovely little creature he is.

In 2019, the area I want to improve most on professionally is design. I also want to write more and read more. I want to improve my communication skills. I want to get better at budgeting my personal finances. I want to cook more. Maybe start baking things too. Most importantly, I want to finish things more often. Either way, I'm looking forward to what 2019 brings.