I’m Grateful for 2018!
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Hands down, the best year of my life till date.
A year back when I ended 2017, I had no idea I would be having these unique experiences in 2018. Now, not all unique experiences are great, some are just there to teach you some life lessons. Like there are plenty of things in 2018 that I missed out on which I was extremely sad about but then something better came along, and I realized the fact that yes, the universe always has a plan.
These are few of my highlights of 2018 —
- Finished the Udacity Android Developer Nanodegree finally but lost the chance to go to Google IO 2018.
- Was super sad about not getting the Travel Grant for Grace Hopper Conference India 2018 but then the universe played its trick and got me the travel grant for Flutter Live 2018 in London.
- So I went to London and kicked off the city from my bucket list.
- Became a better and more confident speaker. Spoke in 2 DevFest conferences, one TEDx Design workshop, facilitated a 3 week Flutter Study Jam in Bhubaneswar, and conducted a few workshops for my own developer community.
- Focused more on writing in Medium. Published 7+ articles on just Flutter. Most of them got 25K+ views, 2.5K+ claps and one of them was translated to Spanish by a community member for a wider reach of audience.
- Started mentoring other developers on LinkedIn, conducted a #AskMeAnything session there and answered almost 15+ questions on placements, career, personality development, technology etc.
- Became a part of the #AskFlutter segment in FlutterLive 2018 and my interview with Andrew Brogdon and Wm Leler got live-streamed to the entire world. Year 2018 was more about the community-wide recognition I got as a developer. See story.
- 150+ stars on my repo, 300+ followers on GitHub, 1.3K+ on Twitter and 30K+ people following my posts on LinkedIn.
- I got a job.
But more importantly, I learnt about self-respect and how important it is to love yourself first before you let other people in. I kicked out toxic people from my life, and I’ve met people who surrounds me with positive energy. I have let out big secrets that I was holding in my stomach since a long time, and I realized how much the big secrets affect your health, your mind and change you as a person.
I became a better person, but more importantly I became the person I always wanted to be. Not how you, he or she wants me to be.
2018 was a roller coaster ride. But I rode it with the best people in my life, and I think that made the ride worthwhile. And I’m honestly scared to see what’s in store for me in 2019. I’m a big believer of ‘jinxing’ and I believe something bad has to happen to balance out the good.
But the beautiful part about life is that you have no idea where you would end up, a year from now. And maybe 2019 won’t be as great as this one, but I’m super happy to have this one year and all its memories in my possession.
Have a great 2019, folks! 🎉🎉
