I know 2020 was basically the worst year for people that weren't born during WW2 or in communism, but honestly, I kind of enjoyed the good parts. Here's a review of my year:
January
Started working at Maxcode. I think I did more presentations in these months at Maxcode than I did in 3 years at my last job, so this is a big plus for me.
At the end of the month I did my last trip abroad in Bruges and Amsterdam with my wife, we left our son at his grandparents so we got to enjoy our trip to the fullest. Here's a pic of some delicious ribs and beer from Bruges :D
February
In February, Irina and I organized the 2nd edition of dotnetdays. We had some awesome speakers and I also did a workshop on Home Automation with .NET. I think for most of them it was the last event they attended offline, but from what they told us they had a great time here!
March
This is when we started working from home because the whole country got into quarantine. Lucky for me, I invested in a personal office last year because I wasn't sure if I wanted to work remote or continue working for a local company.
May
My daughter was born. I had to do a presentation about Mobile Blazor Bindings while my wife was in labor, and that's not something I want to repeat. I was trying to focus on the presentation and in the same time I was asking myself if everything is ok with my wife and the baby... so stress levels were through the roof. Unfortunately, quarantine rules prevented me from joining her in the hospital, I could only drop her off and pick her up a few days after, but everything went well so I'm grateful for that.
September
I got awarded the MVP award for Developer Technologies! I still can't believe this happened but I'm really grateful for it and I hope it won't be the first and last year I receive it :)
End of September
I'm a volunteer at Code4Romania, and this month we had local elections, so we finished in time a new version of https://rezultatevot.ro, a website dedicated to viewing election results in real time. However, this version also includes election results from the past 30 years, which is really nice considering that the government doesn't offer something like this in a user-friendly format.
Rest of the year
The year is not finished yet, who knows what can happen in 3 more months, but I just can't say it was a bad year for myself when all this awesome stuff happened. I'm looking forward to things getting back to normal, so we can travel again and have in-person conferences in meetups. I miss boarding an airplane, I miss the office and the interactions with my colleagues, but this doesn't mean I should just sob until this is possible again. Stay safe, wear a mask, wash your hands, and try to stay positive!
Update
I'm writing this on January 1st, 2021. Just one more significant thing happened since September, I got COVID-19 along with my wife. I had mild symptoms so I consider myself lucky for not having to go to a hospital, but I hope I won't go through it again. In the first few days I was tired and I had a really bad cough, along with fever, but by the time I got tested the symptoms started to wear off so I wasn't worried anymore because I could see that from then on it was going to be better each day. Apart from coughing my lungs out for a few days and losing my smell and taste, I really enjoyed the medical leave even if I had to stay isolated for two weeks in my apartment. I moved the Xbox from my office to the living room and I played with my son video games most of the days so in the end it turned out to be quite relaxing. I did a full medical checkup and everything is fine so I'm grateful I did a full recovery, now I just want to get vaccinated as soon as possible because I have two vacations planned for this year which I don't want to postpone again.
Happy new year 2021, and let's hope you'll be better than the last one!
