We are changing our old calendars to the new ones, even though my wife missed this year our local heroes, the firefighters, who sell their wall calendars for some donations.
It’s high time to think about what I achieved this year, what went well and what I want from the next year.
I cannot complain about the last 12 months. Both my family life and my career advanced.
As personal and family life is more important than professional, I start with the former.
Travelling is a priority for us. This last year we wanted to travel a lot and far while we don’t have to pay full price for the kids’ airfares. We were lucky enough to have adventures on 3 continents (including ours) and we also spent almost a week just in the higher parts of our county.
My daughter started kindergarten, I know it’s difficult for her due to the many languages she has to deal with, but she already more or less understands Hungarian, French and English. I know it’s not easy, but later it will be so advantageous for her.
My son also has grown well, though unfortunately, we lost her nanny - nothing tragic on her side, just some big changes! I hope next year we can find someone for him so that he can socialize a bit more before kindergarten.
Though there were some difficulties at the bigger family back at home, life is just like that. Especially as people grow older. It’s the normal course of life and we all have to deal with it.
On a professional level, I managed to advance in the first half of the year the way I wanted which was great! What’s even better that though it was not year my breakthrough year I think, I spoke at multiple events including RivieraDev and DevOps D-Day.
Officially, I had quite dispersed goals set for me this year which made it difficult, especially the end year, but it seems that after some changes around me, the next year is going to be more focused.
On my blog and on DEV, I posted every week. Funny, but the badges that we could get starting from the beginning of the year for 4, 8, 16 weeks of consecutive posting helped a lot. Now I have a schedule (posting every Wednesday morning) and a habit!
Next year, I want to keep this habit and I will also try to spend a bit more time on adding relevant images to my articles.
In 2020, I would also like to continue speaking at conferences. Though, it’s not my decision. What is in my control is that I’m going to write high-quality submissions for conferences covering development culture or C++.
At work, I will do whatever I can to agree on a not too wide list of goals that I can pursue with dedication. While keeping C++ development as a core, I want to focus on knowledge sharing, being a key contributor in our Technical Mentoring Program and coordinate our software security-related activities. It’s not very few, but still manageable.
On a personal level, we plan some big adventures. We are going to complete one of my dreams, we will visit the Azores in just a couple of months. Next summer, we’ll visit family and as always, we’ll try to combine with visiting something new for us. With the spread of low-cost carriers, possibilities are growing. We’ll see for the rest of the year, but I’d like to visit our region in France a bit more.
As my daughter will turn 4, we will have more opportunities to find her some extracurricular activities, maybe dancing or even football given the kids’ team so close to us.
For my son, we’ll have to find a new nanny for twice a week. It’s difficult, they prefer full weeks, but we want only two so that he can spend more time with his mother and for financial reasons as well.
Also for me, it will be high time to learn a bit more about the French fiscal system and understand how to optimize our taxes.
To me, sounds like an exciting year.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
