In the blink of an eye, the year is over. With the end of the year comes the year-end review.

👨‍👩‍👦 People

Life is tough for everyone, but as the years go by, it seems to get even tougher. There's more to do, and not enough time to do it. That being said, there's one thing that can always help you through it all: friends.

Like most years, I don't know where I would be without some of my closest friends and family to help me through some of life's really tough moments. Compared to last year, it wasn't nearly as difficult, but it still had its fair share of ups and downs.

I want to take a moment to thank my mentor Glauber, a senior developer who believed in me!

I met him at a family celebration, where he was invited by my dad because he was one of our new neighbors. I was still in my 3rd year of high school and I asked him to talk about the future, and he mentioned his digital world full of codes and I was fascinated by what I heard. We talked for hours and I opened up to him, telling him that I didn't have any plans, I was lost about what to work on and be in the future. I asked if he could help me get a closer look at this area and start studying it with him, and he really opened my eyes. Whenever I see him and think about what we went through that day, I thank him.

He helped me with everything: dedication, effort, companionship, and friendship!

Thanks for the opportunity ❤️

🌍 Experiences

Now, for those who don't know me, I'm quite introverted. Especially as I've developed, I've discovered that life is always moving so fast and with so many things happening at the same time that any chance I have to slow down, enjoy the moment, and make good memories, I will take it.

Not to say that a lot didn't happen in 2022, but like most years now, most of my best experiences and memories are with online friends, not going somewhere to do something.

The most frequent memories I have are saved clips from games played with friends. In the past year or 2 this has been more prominent Rainbow Six.
Here are just some of my favorite clips from last year playing Rainbow Six with my friends:

📱 Things

Last year was my last year of additional education as I finally finished my Fullstack course. With that going into 2022, I was finally able to work full time and earn a living on a paycheck.

As such, there have been a number of bigger purchases made this year that I finally got around to after years of planning. There is 1 main purchase I want to focus on:

🏍️​ Motorcycle

After years of waiting, I finally bought it my motorcycle.

Before that, I never owned a motor vehicle, but finally it was my turn. Everything from when I was at school wished for this good! It wasn't easy, but persistence always took care of me and today I know it was all worth it! My childhood dream, JarvaScript it gave me!

💻​ Notebook

After years of waiting, I finally bought it my notebook.

Prior to that, I was using a 15" Asus X540MA notebook that served me pretty limitedly over the years, and unfortunately started to show its age. Everything from general performance degradation to battery life in less than a few hours (even after recent battery replacement) However, the most fundamental problem with the device, as those who can already guess, is the keyboard.

With a bit of savings, I was finally able to pull the trigger in July 2021 to buy a new black Avell A62 LIV Notebook with a 10th gen Intel I7 processor along with a higher specification RTX 2060 graphics card and 32 GB of RAM. After receiving the device about a month later I am very happy with the device and believe it is one of the best purchases I have made for my productivity in a long time.

😷 COVID

I got COVID. As safe and cautious as I was, I ended up testing positive.

In June 2022, I went on a beach vacation with some friends. Sadly, one of those friends tested positive, and a few days later, so did I. After 3 weeks in quarantine, runny nose and a brutal migraine afterwards, I successfully recovered and started testing negative again.

I consider myself lucky. Lucky in the sense that I feel like I got it easier compared to most. Considering my age, I feel like it naturally wouldn't affect me as much as most, but many others haven't been so lucky after testing positive.

🔍 Top Learnings

💰 Investments

I really got into investing my money this year after starting to learn more about it last year.

This year, I've read tons of articles, guides, and more, as well as watched tons of financial YouTubers such as Primo Rico and Humphrey Yang, who were great in helping me with not only some fundamental investing concepts, but also going over some of the current market trends and conditions.

Much of this I wish I had learned in school and been taught at a younger age. But most schools, as far as I know, teach almost no or literally no financial education. Even explaining the basics of things like "What is a mortgage?", "What is a credit score?", etc. are things more people should learn in school.

🌐 Web Development

Having spent the last year at home studying, moving to a full-time home office job as a fullstack/web developer means I've had a lot to learn in the last year. Everything from actually getting my first hands on a production backend environment. Learning to build and use more complex React components. Even starting to finally start using SQL, a language I've always heard of and seen but only touched a few times before.

A lot can be learned from practicing a production codebase.

📋 Team Management

I really enjoyed starting to help my co-workers. Ever since I got a promotion at the company I work for, I've had a new professional perspective by listening to more about the environments and techniques of my teammates! Whether it's something development-based Tailwind or something more personal like using Notion to create a simple list of daily reminders everything I need to do that day.

A lot of what I used to do was quickly write something on a sticky note so I wouldn't forget. But I ended up with a desk and monitor full of them. So I'm glad I finally learned how to take a better approach to managing the tasks and work I do than forgetting assignments or having a rainbow desk made out of sticky notes.

🎯 Targets

It's always good to try to make some goals for yourself for the future. Going into 2023, I have a few key areas I'd like to focus on improving:

✈️ Ambition

Last year I started to follow and see more about the indie hacking community. Bootstrapers, freelancers and those who build amazing projects from scratch. It blows my mind with the incredible work being done by the community.

Like most developers, I had more ideas than time to build them. Lots of ideas, little time.

For now I'm aiming low as I've never launched or released a big product before, so it'll be nice to take a good experience and use it in my future, not just how to make it, but how to make it grow more every year!

See FastFriends and Championship my latest tools in 2022.

🔮 Future

I know what I want today, but I know that the path is difficult, programmers themselves speak to such difficulty, but with the help of my mentor mentioned at the beginning, I want to become a Senior programmer.

I came to this area to show and set an example of my discipline and dedication! I want to make a difference in the digital world and do my best wherever I am, I've already worked with a team and with that experience, I decide to put it forward and find new code errors to solve!

💀 Work Ethic

I often find myself between 2 working states. One where I feel really tired and another being a pure workaholic where I end up pushing my mental and physical limits to the limit and working 12+ hours a day.
An excellent example of this was in 2022, during my tenure process, where I had to help teams resolve their demands, having mine and those of my teammates to follow up. At the height of the pandemic, I will never forget a friend very close to me, today my girlfriend, Isabelle, being in connections with me every day, helping me settle down mentally and spiritually.

But I usually always manage to find a good work-life balance where I'm able to manage my time efficiently, get the work done that needs to be done, but also not destroy my mental and physical health in the process.

📋 Others

There's a few other smaller targets I'd also like to aim for:

• Contribute to more open source projects 💚
• Experience with Stable Difusion imager
• Seek improvement in backend for future projects
• Improvement in my English to travel abroad one day
• Start switching from GSuite to self-hosted and/or more privacy-focused alternatives
• Try and learn a new language while the Duolingo bird watches me while I sleep

And that's it. That's a wrap for 2022.

This year has had its fair share of bumps along the way, but nothing compared to what the world endured last year.

Finally, I want to thank everyone with whom I spent the year. Friends, new and old, especially for helping to make life a little easier and more bearable for me.

Vejo todos vocês em 2023👋