Honestly, this year started out with little to no expectations. I had just entered my senior year at high school (SS3) after months of staying at home due to the world wide pandemic.

As luck would have it, I had used the free time I had on my hands to pick up a skill (Frontend development) that I was very passionate about, which would be what would introduce me into the tech space, an endless world of possibilities. In this short review, I share a summary of the experiences I had this year, the wins, the losses, and my goals for 2022.

I didn't feel like writing this TBH as I don't feel like I achieved a lot to write up those "I 10x my salary and now I work at FAANG (MAANG now) hahahaha" type of review. However after reading Olubisi Idris Ayinde's Year in Review, a mentor I really look up to. I got the mojo to write this up.

Though I would’ve loved to make this a premium read. I can’t promise it will come out that way because I just wanted to write a year review. So anyway it comes out, y’all have to pardon me; I have run out of writing ink.

This is going to be my first ever end-of-the-year review, and I think I'm going to commit to doing it every year to serve as a tool to track my own progress on days when I start to feel like an impostor or days when I feel like I have nothing to be grateful for.

Highlights:

Here are the highlights of the year, wins and losses.

The Good

via GIPHY

• Graduated from high school 🎓
• Grew my online presence 👩🏼‍🤝‍👩🏼‍🤝‍👩🏼
• Made amazing friends online, looking forward to meeting you guys in person. 😁
• Bought a new laptop and phone
• Found a second love/passion (technical writing)
• Went from 0 - 17k views on my @hashnode blog within a span of 3 months.
• Got 3 of my articles featured on daily.dev, hashnode, and dev.to
• Got accepted as a writer at Contentlab and the guest author program at Smashing magazine.
• Decided to start writing technical articles as a means to share my knowledge, solidify my knowledge, and build a reputation for myself. In total, I wrote 14 articles this year, including paid articles (we go again next year 🚀🚀🚀 )
• Made my first $$$

The Bad

via GIPHY

• Received a lot of rejection mails
• Got laid off from an internship at a local firm because I was naive ( a story for another day 😪)
• Missed the opportunity to work as a technical writer at this cool startup because I’m under 18 (Gee, I feel attacked 🤧)
• Lost a lot of friends
• Suffer (ing/ed) from massive depression and burnout, God fix it. 🙏
• Quit social media and blogging at a point, due to burnout caused by trying to balance school with coding. Luckily I recovered (I'm recovering).
• Not yet a millionaire (NGN) 😹

Goals for 2022 🚀

In 2022, I hope to:

• Dive deep into the space of web development and skill up enough to land a remote job and 3x my current income ( I just need to earn in dollars man 🤧)
• Build a closer relationship with God (I'm a Christian), my family, and the friends I make.
• Hopefully, rent an apartment and move out of my family home.
• Get a MacBook
• Get my articles published in as many publications as possible.
• Write a minimum of 24 articles (2 per month)
• Appply to speak at meetups and conferences
• Travel and make new experiences

Final Words

In summary, I had a good year. I started earning a little money, discovered a few more ways to make extra bucks, achieved a lot and failed a lot. ✌️, had new experiences, made new friends and lost old ones. I would say 2021 was an eye opener and a stepping stone for me towards the endless opportunities life has to offer.

We go again in 2022 🔥, the year of being intentional. 💯💯

Lastly, in no particular order, shout out to some of the people who made this year worthwhile for believing in me and taking a chance on me. Thanks to Victoria Lo, Jome Favorite, Victor Eke, Linda, Tapas Adhikary, Idris Olubisi, Samuel Adebayo, Edidiong Asikpo, Tracy Nuwagaba, David and Teri, you guys are the real MVP! Let's do more in 2022 🚀.

Victor ends this year on a good note. WAGMI! ✌️

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!