2015: Year in Review

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After last year’s resolutions, the time has come to reflect upon the past 12 months and to see which of the resolutions I’ve managed to achieve, and which ones I have to attempt to accomplish next year.

Career Development

In terms of my career, I had a pretty productive 2015. Initially it started a bit not too well, but it improved significantly towards the middle of the year when I managed to secure a position at a London-based digital agency called Mettle. There I had the chance to work on interesting Laravel-based projects, met very good and interesting developers, and last but not least, managed to attend the conference dedicated to the Laravel framework – Laracon EU 2015 which took place at the end of August in Amsterdam.

Towards the end of the year, a few clouds gathered on the horizon and I had to leave the company. I started looking for other opportunities, including ones outside London. In November, near my 26th birthday, I was going through a pretty heavy recruitment process for a Berlin-based company and at the end of the month, I was offered a position for a back-end developer there, which after a few days of aimless pondering, I happily accepted and now I am looking forward to starting the new adventure on the 4th of January.

Personal Development

On a personal level, the only significant thing that happened throughout 2015 was a good trip to the sea-side in Bulgaria, which I haven’t been able to visit in years prior to this summer. There, we managed to snap a bargain flat with a spectacular view to the sea, and we had a pretty good and relaxed few days in Varna. Apart from that, I managed to go to London and spend 1-2 months there for the whole year, I managed to make the said trip to Amsterdam and concluded the year with the recent trip to Berlin where I had to start preparing myself for my impending move into the city.

As side projects – I didn’t do much this year, except a few small scripts that I uploaded to Github and one that I am still refining and would try to release towards the middle of January. I attempted to keep up with learning Python, but as PHP kept on growing, and growing, and growing even more this year, I couldn’t really focus on Python and preferred to keep my eyes peeled for the new developments in the PHP and Laravel communities, so I am still planning to improve on Python in 2016.

The Future

I hope that the future 2016 would be even better for all of us. Personally, I hope that my move to Berlin would be as stress-free as possible, that I would be able to learn many new things in the new job, I would be lucky enough to meet interesting people along the way, and last but not least, I would be able to go on more trips to new and interesting places which I have not visited before.

Thanks for reading and I Wish you all a prosperous, productive, healthy and happy new 2016!

Cheers!

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