2017 In Review
This is the last day of the year 2017. I'm sitting right now at my favourite Starbucks cafe and spending the evening writing this post.
Looking back to what all happened in 2017 – It seems like this year would eat all the previous years of my life for breakfast when it comes to challenges I faced. I'm nothing but, astounded when I recall how this year unfolded itself in my life. Not only my professional life went through a major change but also my personal life took a big turn. Majority part of this year went in realigning myself to these changes (or challenges I would say) life threw at me. The segue between these life changes were the hardest part to cope. I wish there were something (or someone) which could play of role of a compass (parents perhaps?) and help me navigate the transitions I was going through. Nevertheless, I believe with every change I grew stronger as a person and unravelled things myself which made me the confident man which I'm today.
Anyways, I want to compile all the highlights of this year starting with....
Marraige
This year I got married to the best person I could possibly ask for; Sadiya – she is the best thing happened to me till date. I'm glad I found a partner who is understanding, caring, loving & most importantly a reasonable person. She has managed to bring out the best of me in every aspect and she constantly keeps doing that. It gives me deep satisfaction to have her in my life.
Europe
I have been planning since a long to take some time off and visit Europe, unfortunately, I never managed to do that until I got married. I had an opportunity window, my wedding leaves, which I took a full advantage of and planned a Europe trip. Surprisingly, It took me a long time to decide what all countries I want to visit – as it was January which is not a recommended time to visit Europe 'cause of low temperature but I did not let that convince me otherwise. Ultimately, We picked France & Switzerland.
Taking The Trip Was The Best. Decision. Ever.
Quitting Full Time Job
I'm an experiment freak, this is one thing I'm really certain in my life. Since I've started working I've been doing experiments with my professional life. It has been a decade since I've been working professionally and I've done dozens of experiments, almost all of them worked out pretty well. Quitting my job at BigBinary was part of that ritual.
BigBinary, played a major part in bringing back professional decipline in my life. I learned a ton of things about consulting, professionalism, programming etc. from them. I, Thank them in having faith in me & my work I was doing for them from bottom of my heart, especially, Neeraj Singh.
Consulting
I'd a very little clue of what I was gonna do next, so I kept an open mind to the things came along my way. Fortunately, I started getting inquries to consult on projects almost immediately. I got to work on some great projects this year and help my clients to get efficient at what they do.
One my of client gifted me this today as a token of appreciation.
— Bilal Budhani ?? (@BilalBudhani) December 13, 2017
The system I helped them build is saving them ton of time and made their internal processes efficient.
To a consultant (like me) gesture like this from a client means a lot. pic.twitter.com/PJ5J9XeFdC
Side Projects
I, somehow, managed to launch a small side project called Stickmatic - Get your photos printed as magnets. After doing some basic social media marketing I managed to get some traction on the project. However, I struggle to devote any time on the project to make it grow. I guess I'll need to figure out someway next year to revamp this project.
Open Source
It makes me really happy to write this section 'cause I was able to allocate small amount of time this year to work on open source stuff. As far as I remember this was a longest pending goal on my to-do list. I'm glad that I was able to put out open source projects.
Blogging
Another thing I wanted to get a hold of was blogging. I did bunch of experiments with blogging over the last few years but failed to keep consistency. So this time I took things seriously and invested significant time to try out multiple blogging frameworks & platforms. Finally, I settled on Ghost - It is minimal, modern, less bloated. I'm running this on self managed DigitalOcean droplet. After that, I started focusing on content and improving my writing style. Good thing was I got featured to Javascript weekly, Ruby weekly and few other newsletters couple of times. I have plans for next year to take writing more seriously.
Family & Friends
Lastly, Transition from a single to a married guy was not easy but I'm glad it happened. I learned a lot about being a family guy and buildng relationships. One thing I can say for a fact is, Relationships are the most fragile thing in the world and they probably has the highest level of impact on your mind. Your productivity is directly related to the health of your relationships with your dear ones. I wish they could see the relationships same way as I do.
Anyways, I'm happy with the progress I made this year now its time to wrap it up. I'm very excited to enter 2018 and execute all the plans I made for it. I hope 2018 would open a lot of opportunities, take me to new heights and help me explore my uncharted potentials.
Happy new year :)