Introduction

It has always been a ritual for me to wind up the year by reflecting on my experiences, accomplishments, and failures through a blog post. That blog post, covering every aspect of my life, would always be published on my personal blog. I am thankful to the team of Hashnode for giving all of us an opportunity to just stop for a while, in the middle of our lives, to reflect on the journey that we took in 2022. I believe that nothing can be a better way to bid adieu to 2022 than walking down memory lane!

#100DaysOfX Challenge

Ever since I came across #100DaysOfX Challenges on Twitter, I have been participating in some of those challenges(#100DaysOfReading,#100DaysOfWriting,#100DaysOfCode) that I declared publicly on Twitter. This was the first time, I tried to keep a track of my progress in these challenges on any social media -(Twitter). I must say that these challenges really helped me to accomplish more in a time frame.

Role of Social Media in this journey

One year on Twitter

I joined Twitter on 14th December 2021 and Tech Twitter has helped me immensely in my technical journey. Resources are available in capsule-sized formats which makes them very easy to intake. People have been extremely helpful in encouraging us to learn and build in public.

I learned a lot from Solo learn App and would spend my time solving questions there.

Hashnode

Ever since I stumbled upon Hashnode, my life has changed. I remember to have published my first article on December 22, 2021, on completing my probation period of 6 months in the company I was then working at. I have always wanted to share my experiences of technical life and couldn't have discovered a better platform than this. I've read articles by a lot of writers here who inspire me to learn and write better.

Articles Written

I've written 30 articles in Hasnode this year which I could never have imagined as I always found technical writing challenging. These articles helped me to earn 4 badges.When I was struggling to select the topic to write about, the immediate thought that came to my mind was to write about the topic I was learning then; Qt. I learned Qt, a framework of C++, through Youtube and various discussion forums like QtForum, and QtCenterForum. As a newbie, I received support whenever I needed it. These articles of mine got mentioned in Miki Szeles 's articles - My first month on Hashnode ,Hashnode Weekly 004 . Out of 30 articles, 2 articles got picked up by daily.dev -Women in Tech ,Introducing one of the investors of Hashnode . I was inspired by the consistency of some of the fellow writers like Miki Szeles , Jorge Romero , Chris Bongers ,Victoria Lo . Hoping to contribute positively to this platform this year.

Analytics

The following picture is the analytics of my blog on Hashnode which has not been so great. As you can read from the line at the bottom of this picture, this analytics is from the last month. I was looking for something like an annual one.

Contests in which I participated on Hashnode

• #2Articles1Week Challenge - I won all three badges Bronze,Silver and Gold.

• #WomenWhoTech - This article got picked up by daily.dev.

This was the first swag I received from Technical World.

• Winner of Hashnode's Book Giveaway- Standout Developer by Randall Kanna

• The Epic Hashnode Writhethon - Among 100 Honorable mentions

  Principles of UI/UX Design

• The Craft Conference Giveaway - I got a chance to participate in the first ever dev conference Developer Week Europe 2022

  The joy of managing Engineering Team

• Earned Talk of the Town Badge for writing a blog post that received high engagement

• Participated in #4articles4week writethon in Hashnode - Received shoutout for my posts by Hashnode Team in Twitter

  Week 1 - My first job as a developer in a foreign land

  Week 2 - Useful Resources for developers

  Week 3 - My latest project

  Week 4- Monthly Wrap Up

Skills I learned

• Designed blog banners, logos by using Canva

• Tried my hands on C#

• Learned about CSS , HTML

• Learned about FLASK REST API

Platforms I used

I used various platforms like twitter,youtube, freecodecamp, geekforgeeks,learnSQL,datacamp for learning concepts and practising them.

Courses and Certifications

I won scholarship for the course Learn SQL from A to Z from learnSQL.com. So, it became my aim to complete the track.

From learnSQL.com , I completed following courses:

• PostGRESQL Joins

• Standard SQL Functions

• SQL Practice Set in PostGRESQL

• SQL Basics

• How to INSERT,UPDATE,and DELETE Data in SQL

• Creating Basic SQL Reports

• Track Completion Certificate - SQL from A to Z Track

• Recursive Queries

• Group by Extensions in SQL

From Datacamp , I completed following courses:

• Python Datascience Toolbox (Part-1)

• Introduction to Python for Finance

• Python for spreadsheet users

• Intermediate Python

Projects I completed

From Freecodecamp's Legacy Responsive Web Design Course, I completed

• Build a Tribute Page

• Build a Survey Form

  I also did basic CRUD projects in Flask REST API.

Professional Career - Learnings from my first job abroad

After completing my probation period of 6 months, I was exposed to the real world problem in my first job abroad. Here's a post describing my experience of working in an MNC in abroad. I moved to another country in mid June and goodbye was hard. I've been trying to search for job opportunities matching my skills. I appeared in some interviews , cleared some rounds while got rejections at the end. I haven't received an offer letter in my hand. I'm learning from these rejections; be it writing a personalized cover letter, short-form of Resume,appearing in online interviews or coding rounds, asking for feedback, I am learning a thing or two which I have not learned before. I try to extract the lessons from my failures with a promise of not repeating them in future. This definitely is a challenging stage but I hope that the right work place, team, culture is waiting to embrace me soon. I am hopeful about it. Surely all these rejections are about to turn in my favour. In the whole process, I must not forget that the failures are stepping stones to success.

Final Note

Overall, 2022 was a great year for me which provided me ample opportunities to travel the world and embrace mixture of experiences. I hope that 2023 will be even better. Wishing all of you a very Happy New Year, 2023!

Accomplishing unfinished tasks & goals for 2023

First I would like to complete the unfinished tasks from previous year.

• Reviewing some technical books(received from giveaways) that I've read

• Completing last three projects from the course Legacy Responsive Web Design by freecodecamp

• Contributing to Open Source Projects in C++,Python,C#,MATLAB etc.

• Reading more technical articles

• Writing at least 20 articles in Hashnode

• Competitive coding for atleast 1 hour every day

• Learning new skills in Data Science and Embedded Software Engineering

• Completing Courses on Coursera

• Completing Credited courses from Coursera

• Improving skills in technical writing and monetizing it

• Stengthen my portfolio

• Build meaningful network