Dec 30, 2021

2021 Review

Hello again after a year! I've been sharing my journey, goals, and achievements for 6 years. I started this series for just blogging purpose but I see it makes me very motivated for the next advantures. This year has been a good year overall, where I focused more on myself and did a lot of things. I also experienced many things for the first time. Here are the reviews for my journey and goals for 2021.

Work Life 👨🏻‍💻

desk-setup

After graduating from university, I was able to focus fully on my job this year. In Jan 2021, I joined the iyzico. I contributed to both web and mobile applications here and I had a small very friendly team. After working with small companies, iyzico was a good experience for me to work with many people and teams. Pair programming, collaboration, code reviews, test driven development, etc. I experienced many things here for the first time.

⚡️ During the time, I was working on open-source projects like always. I finished one of my favorite projects React Native Hold Menu and shared it with the community. Many people liked and shared it. Thanks to this project, I had a chance to meet and work with many people (special thanks to Gorhom for helping me to solve some important problems). After a while, I got a message from a person who we follow on Twitter each other. He told me that he liked the project a lot. And he offered me a job. After talking about the details of the job I accepted and joined the Qooper. I had experienced several interviews and solved test cases, I have to tell that they can be very stressful. After I accept the job, they did not send me a test case. Because they already saw my code. It is really great advantage and of getting a job offer from the open source!

Kodluyoruz 🎙

This year I tutored for the first time with Kodluyoruz. It is a company that organizes boot camps for people who want to learn to code for free. They offered me to join them as an instructor and I thought it would be a good experience. I taught JavaScript and React to awesome 30 people. After one and half months almost every one of them completed their journey with a certificate and they developed great projects. Some of them started working with companies. Being part of such things is great motivation for me.

Paragliding

paragliding

To be able to continue my paragliding career and fly more, I turned back to Sakarya after getting full-time job with my girlfriend. Here, I flew as many as possible.

💥 In good weather conditions, I pushed my limits and tried acro maneuvers. One of them went wrong.. I crashed for the first time after 5 years in paragliding. When I do a maneuver (helico) I lost all the altitude and did not realize it. I found myself on top of a tree. 🌲 Huh, hopefully, I was ok.

I also went to Oludeniz, Muğla several times to fly there to improve myself, this place is one of the best for paragliding in the world. And, for the next year, I will be there for a long time!

Goals 🎯

Habits

📗 Read 15 books at least

Well, I made it double! I finished more than 30 books this year. But I am mostly listening to books. At the beginning of the year, I was living alone and doing many things alone, walking, cleaning home, cooking, etc. While I do these, I always listen to a book. Of course, I have read some of them. I don't have a habit to read books, trying to get that habit by reading some e-books but still leaving them after a while. I will definitely try to read more.

🚶🏻 Walk 100k per month

One of the things I could not make it. Just before 21 and at the beginning of 21, I was walking regularly every day. I thought I can do it 100k per month. Somehow I stoped walking regularly. One of the reasons for it was my surgery. In February 2021, I had surgery on my left leg. It made it impossible to do it for a long time. But you know it is an excuse. After getting better, I did not care about this goal.

🤔 Take self-criticize regularly

This was the best thing I have ever done in these goals. Definitely. None of us is perfect and will never be. I have some problems with my emotional moods and relations. To fix these, I decided to make self-criticise regularly, write my emotions, what happened and what I did for them etc. This habit allowed me to see and fix some problems in my life. I could not make it regularly but made it several times. It was so helpful.

💰 Get better at finance and invest regularly

I was really bad at finance. I had not enough information about investment types, stock markets, economic changes, and the most important term: money. Investing smartly makes you be retired earlier than you think. I decided to get better at it and should invest regularly and smartly. I have read some books to get started. Now I will be focused more on some intermediate-level topics.

Tech

🧪 Get better in TDD for React & React Native

I developed many applications with React and React Native until now. But testing is an important thing to make our applications safer and feel confident. Until 2021, I did not write fully tested applications. I put myself a goal about it. And after that, I worked on the applications which we write tests for both units, integrations, and end-to-end tests. I still have lots of things to learn and improve my techniques. I will continue to this goal. It is not 'done' but I put a checkmark on it for now.

🃏 Get better in Reanimated

I kinda got better at it. Reanimated is one of the greatest packages in React Native powered with JSI architecture. I always like good interactions and animations on applications. I developed React Native Hold Menu with Reanimated and also tried to create similar animations/interactions with it. Also, Gesture Handler is the best friend of Reanimated which developed by the same company. You should check it out!

📦 Publish React Native Hold Menu

I published it! It was really challenging project for me. The thing I tried to build somehow was hard to work perfectly on both Android and iOS and I tried to solve different problems throughout the project.

Here, there is a fun fact; thanks to this project, my efforts, and people who helped me on this project (especially Gorhom), I found my first global company (which I am currently working with). Actually, they found me. Our team leader saw my sharing on Twitter and told me he is impressed, asked me if I can work with them. This is very motivating! Another little big detail is that they did not send me a test case. Because they already saw my coding skills, what I've done until now. After experiencing some interviews with test cases, I saw that it is a very stressful process and understand the importance of this advantage very well.

🎨 Improve design skills

I did not create great designs but Figma is my second best friend. I always try to design my ideas with inspiration from the community. Here you can check my profile. I shared some designs from my work.

Also worth the mention, many of these goals are not finishable but I feel I reached my goals. That is why I put checkmark but will definitely continue them.

Paragliding Acro 🪂

I have a mini career in paragliding. I am trying to be an aerobatics pilot. It is the hardest path on the paragliding but most adrenalin way! I love to do some maneuvers on air. I was able to do just a few of them this year. To improve yourself in this path, you should fly hours, practice many many many times. Like anything else, you need to spend your time a lot. I do not have to rush, still have some maneuvers for next year 🤘🏽

New Goals 👀

Now, it is time to set new goals for the 2022. I already wrote down some of them and here you can see the list. See you next year!

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