2020, what a year

2020 was (technically, still is) an extraordinary year. For many people, this was the worst, the weirdest, the most depressing year; the year we wish was a bad dream. With all the respect for the terrible things, lots of people went through, for me, it was a year to remember.

In 2020 I learned how to work from home. It’s still not super fun, but it’s possible. As I look at that now, there are obvious benefits: I can start and end my day much more freely; I currently don’t feel much pressure when willing to go for a walk or a run at 11:00, or when I finish my workday at 16:00 (I tend to start around 8:30 while at home). But that being said, I still don’t consider staying full-remote and I want to go back to the office, co-working, or a random coffee bar.

In 2020 I bought a bicycle. After three years in Berlin, I’m with “all of those people” now :) Can’t say I’m super excited about the purchase. Mostly because I live in the walking distance from the office. With the bicycle, my “commute” is only five or seven minutes shorter. I have to wait at the traffic lights a lot; plus I have to spend extra minutes to lock/unlock the bicycle.

In 2020 I walked, on average, one kilometre per day more, than in the previous year (5.5 km vs 4.2 km). A bit of surprise but, overall this year, I walked less than I did in 2019. I bet that’s because this year we, obviously, didn’t travel much, so we didn’t have a chance to spend weeks walking around a new city, neither in Spring, nor on Christmas and New Year.

In 2020 we adopted a cat. The CAT, who’s now called Gagarin! He came to us from the middle of “nowhere-Russia” as a frightened little kitten and spent the first month under our bed, avoiding walking under the light. And now, after four months, he comes to have a nap on our pillow (and on my head) at 7:00, as his way to signal that it’s time to feed him.

In 2020 I assembled my four nodes Raspberry Pi Kubernetes cluster, but I haven’t made much use of it yet. As promised to myself in December 2019, during the year I learned and touched some new Kubernetes details, and I have tons of things I still want to get my hands into to understand on a more in-depth level of details.

In 2020 I started to learn Rust. I tried learning it in 2018 and in 2019. But this year, I actually spent a month or two writing code, not only reading/watching/listening to/following the content. It feels refreshing. Programming for embedded devices and game-dev are the most attractive fields that I want to explore further with Rust.

In 2020 I had two job interviews. None of them were successful for me, although I tend to believe that I’ve passed both. I have plans to draft a note about the essential questions one must ask the HR during the first call, somewhere later.

In 2020 I did and learned, and read, and listened to, and watched, and thought about a bunch of things.

In 2021 I will do even better.