This was a crazy year not only for me, but for the whole world. Pandemic, Corona virus, lockdown. But it was a special year for me and I have a feeling that it is going to change the rest of my life, for good.

We started the new year by giving lunch treat to Archana’s family and I enjoyed a lot with her cousins. Played football in the Podium, gone to Kovalam beach. Enjoyable moments.

I got selected in Omio, a German company. After a lot of back & forth decisions, we decided not to relocate to Germany and stay in Chennai itself. Main reasons are to support my family (mom), too much risk to migrate without having a job for Archana & cost of living is more compared to India. But it turns out to be a very good decision later.

Archana got selected in Ally & we decided to move out of Pacifica Aurum. I especially enjoyed the 1 year stay there. It was an awesome home. We relocated to Alandur which is nearby her workplace. But right from Day 1, she couldnt go to office because of Pandemic and she is working from home. Though we didnt get the comfort of Pacifica, we enjoy living in the city now.

I got selected in Toptal, a freelancing platform and that changed my rest of the year. I got some free time in Francium, so I could able to prepare and attend the time consuming interview process. After a month of struggle found a US client and started working for them. My financial status changed a lot after that. Going to complete my home loan this week, got confidence to try my own stuffs.

I got an opportunity to try the consultation work (learnt in Thoughtworks) in nD and I should say Curt was impressed by my way of work. I was also highly motivated as there are lot of scope for learning & improvements. I have lot of freedom and could try out my ideas here. There are still lot of things to improve, hopefully next year would also be an awesome one with nD.

Though I was taking lot of courses (Spark, Scala, Akka, Kafka, Cassandra) I couldnt write much of blog posts or do open source contributions. Mostly I was trying to catchup with the technology stack used in nD and it is not something simple. This year I could able to complete AWS Certification (Solutions Architect) & Certified Kubernetes Administrator. But both these happened before starting my freelancing work. Next year I should start focussing on blogs, oss & side projects.

On the travel front, I was more attracted towards Tirupathi. Myself & Archana gone there at Feb & Nov (with Nagaraj) by steps path(alipiri metu), it was very tiring but good experience. We again gone with Archana’s parents by Dec and had good darshan. Planning to visit once in 2 months from next year onwards. Recently, We spent a week’s time in Palani & Kodaikanal. It was a memorable trip and I started to plan lot of trips next year.

Finally this year gave me the freedom which I was longing for a very long time. I could able to find time for trying out things, learn new stuffs, travel, reading books. But I have a feel that this is just a beginning and hopefully next year, I could able to do these things in a much more impactful way. For next few years, I am not interested in joining any company and want to work as a freelancer.