Year in review, 2021

I make it a point to always write down a scorecard for the year. If anything, to serve as a chronicle for me to come back and look at.

Despite the challenges that the year posed, covid and all, I’d say overall it was a great year for me. I’ll try to break down the scorecard into sections:

Career

I transitioned from Twiga Foods to Microsoft. The move for me was a huge one. For starters, the bump in compensation was significant. However, and more importantly, I now have an opportunity to build products that are used globally by tens of millions of people and learn from some of the world’s best engineers. It puts a lot of perspective on how to architect scalable products and work in a diverse team. The downside, however, is losing out on learning about scalability firsthand. Given I have worked for multiple other startups prior, I can live with that tradeoff.

Personal Projects

Roometo’s team scaled up. A lot of processes were put in place and that, to some degree, helped smoothen out some of the operational nightmares. The downside, however, is that the model does not work. It hurts to say, but it’s the truth.

I had also intended to work on other projects in my free time albeit I didn’t get to do much of that. I could blame it on time but I know too well is a lack of proper organization and laziness. Next year, I intend to be a lot serious about this…maybe try building in public? 🤔🤔

Learning

I had intended to get back to intermediate French proficiency by the end of the year… a big failure!!! Again, not so much as lack of time to practice or learn but just poor planning and laziness.

Around growing my skills as an engineer, I’d say I did decent on this. One thing I decided to do was focus on the fundamentals and go deep instead of broad. That means I don't care much about the new shiny languages or tools coming out. I decided I’ll learn about what I need or is curious about. I took a couple of online courses, read the You Don’t Know JavaScript series, and applied myself to practice what I had learned. It also became apparent to me just how wide programming is and how difficult it is to know when one has attained an “expert” level. I know for a fact I don’t want to be so good that I can write my programming language. That takes a lot of effort that I don’t think I want to exert. But I do want to be at the level of competency where I understand how things work and can build solutions that solve actual problems.

I had also intended to re-learn about securities to diversify my portfolio. On this, I also failed. If I say poor planning and laziness, I’ll start to sound like a broken record.

Investments

I grew my portfolio 4x and am now near lean F.I.R.E. Lean F.I.R.E means the returns from an investment can cover one’s basic expenditure. I am yet to do a thorough analysis of my returns but I think I averaged somewhere around 7–8% this year. I’d do that sometime next week. Maybe I should make this a bit more public? 🤔 🤔

I had intended to diversify a bit more, especially in offshore investments. My attempts to get Vanguard’s S&P 500 didn’t pan out, but I intend to figure this out next year.

Experiences

I did a bit of travel this year and explored places I wanted to. I am not sure writing details of it here would be helpful though. I also realized that at some point, I got bored although I am not sure why.

I didn’t meditate as much as I would have wanted to. There’s a period when my routine was out of rhythm. Therapy helped bring me back up and I made attempts at meditating and taking more conscious time off.

Health and fitness

Nothing to write home about. My goal was to start gyming and of course, get my weight to around 70kgs. I think of all the goals I had set, this one is the one I failed the hardest. Nothing remotely close to a valiant effort I am ashamed to say.

Others

I had other goals, some of which are too personal for me to write here. One of them, however, was to get me a car. I haven’t been able to decide which one yet. Stuck between too many options and the thought of “Do I need one right now?” I’ll try doing a better job of narrowing it down next year.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful in some way. And happy holidays!!!