A life they say is full of sweet and bitter moments and I'm grateful my sweet moments outweigh the bitter ones even though the pandemic made things a lot more difficult.
I started this year thinking of transitioning from web development into cloud engineering and although it has not been a bed of roses, I'm really glad I took the leap. Thanks to my friends and the communities I joined that make the journey worthwhile. Y'all are the best!
The Good
- Got selected to participate in SheCodeAfrica (SCA) Cloud School. 
  
- Got featured in Business Insider about the growth of open source in Nigeria. 
- Got serious with writing technical articles. My articles have gotten more than 20,000 views on Dev🎉🎉. Thanks to all my readers! 
  
- Awarded the top 7 author of the week on Dev. 
- Awarded the top Node author of the week on Dev. 
- Got a full-time role as a Software Engineer. 
- Got three technical writing gigs from international companies. Oh my my!🤩 
- Volunteered and got selected for SCA cloud school Person of Contact. 
- Interviewed with a few FAANG(MANGA, now :)) companies. I'm going to write about this another time. 
- Volunteered and got selected for SCA summer Code Camp Person of Contact (POC). 
- Got enrolled into the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree through an IA scholarship. 
  
- Received good reviews on my articles (one of the best wins)💃. 
  
- Aced two out of three DevOps interviews. Got an offer from one of them🔥.
- Left a toxic workplace.
- Completed my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
- Improved my mental health.
- Passed the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam🎉.
- Got a lot of swags from different companies (the sweetest).
- Got selected as a Runner-up for the 2021 GitHub actions hackathon on Dev🔥🔥. 
  
- Successfully transitioned from web development to cloud engineering. 
- Made new and amazing friends. 
The Bad
- Burnout. I was doing a lot of things together, a full time role with two writing gigs and a Udacity course were just too much for me to handle. I had to drop the writing gigs at some point.
- Got a rejection from one of the two DevOps interviews I thought I aced. 
  
- Turned down the opportunity to speak at two events due to imposter syndrome and lack of preparation time. I hope to do more public speaking next year. 
- My social life was a mess and I hope to fix it next year. 
In summary, I’m happy for my growth, even with the obstacles and challenges. I hope things get much better next year.
Thank you for reading and wishing you all the very best in 2022!
 
 
              

 
    
Top comments (6)
Congrats on a great year and thanks for sharing the not so great parts too as that is equally important for people to see!
I hope 2022 is even better for you and you have a bigger list of "The Good" and a smaller list of "The Bad" things this time next year!
Thank you very much!🙏 I wish you an amazing 2022 too!
You should definitely not let imposter syndrome hit you. I had the same issue but I took the plunge. In the end, I was very satisfied :)
Congrats on the rest!
Thank you Benoît!🙏 I will definitely work on it.
Thanks for sharing both the goods and the bad. Keep up the good work. I am motivated
Thank you!😊