2021 In Review

Looking at 2021 and all that happened this year, and one word I echo to myself is "Interesting".

I started the year excited and hopeful about many things--career growth, spiritual growth, personal growth, mental-health improvement, social improvement, and more.

And I'm ending the year with career wins, personal wins, some good mental-health improvement, ups and downs with my spiritual life, a bit of social-life progress too...and COVID-19 🥲.

Highlights:

• I got a better understanding of some of the things I heard/saw/learned growing up as a Christian
• transitioned to a developer advocate role as a Frontend Developer Advocate for Stream
• relocated to the Netherlands 🇳🇱 to continue working for Stream
• Found a new church (CCI) where I get to hear the word of God in-depth, though I'm not sure how I'd continue with this considering I'm in a new country and would want to attend a physical church too.
• started my YouTube channel on my birthday, (200 subscribers now 🚀) where I share things about Tech, Career, and Life
• started a podcast where I talk about a lot of things (I've been pretty slow on this one, though)
• got accepted as a Guest author for Sanity.io, Strapijs and ContentLabIO
• learned a little about the relevance of investing and started investing on Rise...use G1M7TQ18 as the referral code if you're signing up please 🥺
• created more contentttttt
• started tiktoking for fun 😂
• started a newsletter, ought to be a weekly one, but it was pretty hard keeping up with it on a few occasions...hopefully, I do better next year
• by the grace of God, I made lives easier for many people...I tend not to accept thank yous a lot, but I'm delighted I could help many people this year, financially and in their careers.

Spiritually, I got confused at some point. I started to doubt some of the things I used to believe in. I became more attentive to how some churches manipulated members, how some were just about money, and many other things. This affected my growth, and I wasn't even doing personal studies so much anymore.

In the midst of all these, I didn't lose my faith, though. I held on to the few things I still understood and could hold on to and practiced them with my heart. And a few months ago, I found a church (CCI) where my heart connected easily.

Personally, I became a better version of myself. I understood that people are different, and different people grew up in different environments, which influences their character and mindset. This made me less judgemental and more understanding of people and their choices.

I also learned more about love. Understood it to be something you have to be intentional about. It made more sense when I realized that love is a choice.

Career-wise, I grew and learned more about Frontend tools, frameworks, and content creation. I helped many people online with my content, influencing many people to start writing.

Financially, I invested in Trove and Rise. I also gave out more than I paid attention to myself. In 2022, I'd want to pay more attention to myself even as I look out for others.

Socially, I connected with many people online. It was good to free myself from just tech posts/tweets to cracking jokes and making friends online.

Mental-Health-wise, it was a mix. Sometimes, I'm happy, forgetting the "negative" things happening around me. Other times, I'm overwhelmed with negative things. Well, I'm still learning how to focus more on the things that make me happy and worry less about the things that make me sad.

Yeah, I also did a covid test yesterday after 5-days of isolation, and the result came in today positive. Phew. I'm pretty shocked as I've had no symptoms these past few days, but I'll be fine...hopefully.

For 2022

I want many things for 2022 tbh. Here's some:

• build a closer and better relationship with God
• super-grow in my career (write a lot, create a lot of videos, help a lot of people, make impacts in Stream, and so much more)
• make lives easier for many many people
• become better in how I deal with things and people
• make more moneyyyyyyyyy

In all honesty, a job and country change were things I never planned for this year. So, 2022 may be full of surprises too.

Merry Christmas 🎉, Happy Holidays, and I wish you a blissful 2022! 🥂