Finally 2019 is going to get over, it has been a tremendous year with lot of learnings, roller coaster rides. Few major life changing events.

I quit from Thoughtworks and joined my friend’s company Francium Technologies along with Archana. We shifted our home to Pacifica Aurum (Till now its the best home I have been). From the day one, I realised that I am going to be a developer again, not sure if it means downgrading from the Tech Lead role which I was playing. But I liked this.

Started learning Spanish around Febraury time and tried to maintain the streak till November (approx 200 days). It was a very good experience because I have always been low, when it comes to learning new language. Started learning German towards the end of December and maintaining 10 days streak. Hope it will continue in 2020.

Technically I learnt a lot, contributed a lot. Rails, Kubernetes, Vuejs, GCP - these are the primary technologies which I worked. This year I got goodies as I successfully completed the Hacktoberfest (tee shirt and stickies from Digital ocean). I am waiting for the gift from dev.to for contributing to their repository. It was a surprise. Though my open source contribution stopped after october month.

Also I was consistent in taking sessions at office and gave some talks at Parani s company. Though around November time, I stopped taking sessions as I find that it was not useful for many people. I was also blogging consistently (wrote approx 12 blog posts in medium), though that also stopped by october time. Should try to maintain the streak in 2020.

Started becoming conscious about the Investments. I have invested in few stocks, learnt basics of stock market, mutual funds and other investment options. Though I was more aggressive around August, September time, it was kind of slowed down towards the end. Main reason for that is Karvy s scam and I lost some money in it. But this investment and trading are the things which I was hoping to learn for a long time and finally could start the process in this year.

On the fitness side, I was playing shuttle with my office mates (though I missed few weeks here and there), gone to gym regularly for 2 months and then it got stopped. The surroundings here is very good for the morning walk. For the last 1 month, I have been walking atleast for an hour in the morning and then climbing 10 floors. It is a very good exercise, though I should start focussing more on fitness in 2020.

In the travel part, I didn’t travel to any foreign countries this year. But we visited many places in India. Theni & Munnar for Guru s marriage, Madurai trip with Archana s sister, Mumbai trip with Shankar s family, Bangalure trip to Padma s home, Kanchipuram visits. Myself and Archana spent lot of quality time this year and hope she will also enjoy those.

In adhoc manner, I have learnt a lot through youtube, udemy courses. Few best courses which I did. The net ninja UI related courses (html, css, vuejs …), Day trading courses in Udemy, Madhan Gowri s videos, Your Mutual Funds videos.

I read lot of books this year, majorly Harry potter series, biographies (Lee Kuan Yew, about LTTE, Japan, World wars). It is a habit now to read daily before going to bed.

To summarise, 2019 year is a start for many good things. I found my passions and tried to put some effort in learning / achieving those.

The key takeaway: Maintain the streak and do it regularly (in a disciplined manner). This will definitively give good results. Hopefully will continue that in 2020 as well.