The time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is always a time for me which I use to reflect a lot upon myself. It is a tranquil time of the year where I reason about the good, the bad and the ugly of the last year and what I want to achieve in the next year. So what is better than writing an own list of New Year’s Resolutions.
2018:
The ugly:
To make it short: I did not look after my physical health. My weekends were often spent thinking about production and whether it will break because of external webservice dependencies
The bad:
I think I could have learned more new things. I was really focussed on deepening my existing knowledge. I worked more than I should, had a lot of overtime, which I at least could convert to PTO just before Christmas. The project I am working on will be put on the Backburner which is kind of sad since I invested a lot in it. I try to see the positive side: There will be new things to do.
The good:
My personal development at work was quite impressive and I am really satisfied in this department. Got a new “shiny badge” saying Senior Software Engineer. I don’t feel like it too much but I was told that “I do what Seniors are doing here and I grew a lot since I joined” My role switched a bit from being a pure Backend Developer to some kind Backend Guild Leader which includes a lot of meetings about the product as it is. I was at the SpringOne Platform Conference in Washington DC which was an awesome experience. So thats it for 2018 – Farewell!
2019:
So what will I be doing in the next year to make it shine?
1. Write 50 blog posts this year and grow the blogs popularity:
I somehow got convinced that writing regularly on an own blog is more than worth it. This year I want to feel this experience for myself. I want to write about 50 blog posts this year which translates to around 1 per week with a few weeks off.
On top of it, I also want the blog to be read by at least a handful of people. On the way, I want to learn some basics about SEO and online marketing. If these steps are somehow successful, I want to set up a mailing list on which I then want to publish at least once a month.
2. Learn Android (Kotlin)
Every programmers new Year’s Resolution has at least one new Language on it. For me, it seems that it is Kotlin. At work, I got the suggestion/approval to learn a mobile platform and since our iOS Developers are still working with Objective C mostly – I guess I want to jump the Android Bandwagon
3. Improve the Stability of the Backend I am currently working on
Next year we want to start sundowning the project. This means the project will be actively maintained but not getting any new features. In order to focus on other projects: We need to make it more stable. At the moment it is too dependent on the availability of other services.
4. Extend my knowledge of Backend Technologies
At the moment I am more or less just using Spring Boot. Maybe I can even sneak in another language here. I just want to make sure that my knowledge is not bound to one specific language and framework.
5. Maybe another one I discover in the next few days
I am hoping to get a bit of feedback on this article and then see if anything good comes up.
So what are your New Year’s Resolutions?
Would love to hear it. Just leave a comment here or hit me up on any social platform you want. A good 2019 to all of you!
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