2022 ended fast. While 2020 was about getting lost, and 2021 was about finding direction, this year felt like it’s about finding my rhythm - and it feels SO good. Being in rhythm to me is about moving forward while being in full awareness and presence. It’s about not being held too much back from the past, while not looking too much forward in the future. It’s about living in the now, being genuinely curious about many things, and trying to experience things at it’s fullest and deepest levels. It’s about participating in infinite games. About finding habits, routines, community that sticks right in my identity. Not identity as in heritage or society, but identity as in me and things I value.
Home
I began the year home. A good start surrounded by comfort and the family I love and missed. The traditions, old friends, family, food, places, and most importantly the people that I’ll see for the very last time (my uncle, grandpa, grandma). At a deeper level, being home is a lot of things including feeling restless, confined, guilty, grateful, inspired, carefree, bored, at ease. It was sad leaving huge layers of me behind, but I was fully recharged as soon as I got back for a fulltime at Shopify.
Full time job
Excited that there’s more people including interns in the team. Despite the Shopify layoffs at the start of the year, our team was fortunate to have no one leaving. Through the 8 months, I finished multiple projects like action sequencing, UI migrations, revamping the schema to make actions a first-class-citizen in our trust platform, and moving into a smaller specialized team owning a rules engine. Some days are more busy than others and I feel empowered to have good amount of freedom to choose the kinds of work that I want to partake. Now gaining more product context and familiarity with the codebase and ruby-on-rails, has given me ownership, ability to participate in more discussions, and I’ve been enjoying my work so much more.
What felt most rewarding to me was working with variety of people with different styles, skillsets, perspectives, and timezones. Working closely with interns, new hires, senior/staff engineers, data scientists, managers, operations; these people evolved the way I think through problems, finding opportunities and initiatives to propose ideas, fix things fast, discuss solutions and concerns through pairings, more empathy, etc. We had a burst on October and I remembered one discussion I had with my former mentor from my internship was how lucky I am to start off my career learning from the best people carrying tons of experiences behind them.
I’ve also had my first official manager, who’s a very open/honest/empathetic person that can guide me through my career struggles. I was skeptical at first, but was enlightened by how important it was to have a personal manager as part of the career journey.
Another valuable part of work is the open feedback. A positive behavior I should keep doing include being able to look for context on my own. To improve, I’ve gotten suggestions/feedback mainly about communication such as taking my time to make things clear when I pair with people, contribute more opinions on slack threads, not being afraid to bring up discussions through different channels, sharing learnings to empower myself and others to learn even faster.
I’ll be leading a project next cycle. Thrilled and a bit tensed, but I’m hopeful that I can make good impact and learn so much from the experience!
After work, exercise, socials
This year was perhaps the most social I’ve been throughout my life. I tried many diffferent clubs using my alumni card, including archery, table tennis, running, tea club, visual arts club, movie club, climbing. After a long day at work (at home), there was a phase where I had something going on and conversations with different people every day of the week.
There was the community of insane runners who I ran with twice a week during the summer. They helped me carry myself from a 6’ pace to now comfortably running a 5’ pace on a 5-10k and finish my first ever half-marathon right under 2 hours. Now I’m part of a larger community on Strava, and I loved running more than ever before and I love the tracks I never knew existed here in the Waterloo area. To me running became a practice of mindfulness, finding comfort in every stride and hip movements, controlling the pace, and most importantly, breathe.
I’m also part of a close group of climbing friends with more than 10 climbers in our chat. It started off with me taking the leap of talking with a stranger at a gym, then the magic of mutual circles just does the job. There was also an even larger discord group I found and I connected with a few of them. Part of the joy in climbing is the supportive community that it brings together no matter what stage you are at, and I am proud to be one of them. I was also glad to participate in a route setting workshop this year. It was eye-opening to experience the other side of this hobby! At the end of the day its nothing but passionate problem solvers. The problem is artificial but it aims to bring us together and be the best of ourselves. An infinite game!
The table tennis club was also an amazing stress-relief after work, and where I met a few new friends at. I’ve gotten better over the years, and I was still butchered on a club competition back in August.
There was also a guy who approached me while I was reading kindle in the ion train station one Saturday night. It was as simple as asking how my weekend goes, and we got to know each other on my train home. I re-approached him on IG when I remembered he said he’s part of visual arts club and that I was interested. The club was a space for people who loves art to come together, but we ended up just lurking around talking and being constantly amazed at the works of many talented artists in that room. They were all very playful and hilarious and it was an unforgettable vibe altogether.
Reading
I have read some really good books this year 😊 ‘Project Hail Mary’ was my favorite of all time. I think I got teary eyes in ‘I’m glad my mom died’ and ‘when breath becomes air’. ‘Unnatural causes’ was a good memoir that gets you fascinated about death. ‘Permission to feel’ was heart-warming and helped me understand myself more. ‘Antifragile’ was really lengthy but rich of new perspectives. ‘How to be perfect’ was absolutely hilarious. ‘The end of everything’ got me fascinated about nature, and hey! I had a chat and got a photo with Katie Mack the author! 📸 (and her signature too)
I’m currently midway through ‘An emotional education’. I’ve also continued reading ‘Designing Data Intensive Application’ recently, which I picked up on 8 months ago but stopped. Currently 60% through and learning so much! There’s also ‘The dawn of everything: a new history of humanity’ which I gave up at 15% It was interesting, but not encyclopaedia-thick interesting.
I’m super excited for all the good books I’ll be reading next year 📚.
On another tangent, I finished up a ‘Concurrent Data Processing for Elixir’ course this august (certificate). Elixir is super cool to build really scalable and fault-tolerant pipelines, and I’d love to revise my notes sometime. I forgot to stop subscribing to Educative 😓, so now that I paid it I guess it’s another year of learning!
Miscellaneous - I reached a milestone of 100wpm on typing test!
- Attended late in-person graduation and meeting old friends
- Went to Swedish House Mafia concert, my first concert ever. I was third-wheeling then, but I still love the chaotic vibe of people around me. You can’t help but dance and sing with the crowd. Might seem a bit out of character, but I was still me and I loved it.
- Visiting google office and old friend.
- Visiting Shopify office in Toronto and meeting some co-worker in-person for the first time.
- Started going on dates and I found love for the first time in my life this November ❤️. It’s been a weird series of events and I’m loving every single part of it. Sad that we’ll be doing LDR soon. I feel so loved and that feeling is absolutely amazing. We both still have lots to learn about each other and about finding balance in relationship, but she definitely was the highlight that had made this year special.
Overall, this year has brought so much fulfillment and joy. I have found myself multiple times over, and this couldn’t have been possible without support of many people around me. I hope that I had improved their life as much as they had on me. My wish for next year is to have more courage, tackle new uncertainties, and carry over all this rhythm built up over this year to create something even more amazing. At the same time, taking time to breathe and embrace any emotions with people around me.