Monday, January 4, 2021

Reflecting on Year 2020

⚠️ Content warning: This blog contains mention of death 

 The year 2020 - A year filled with a lot of uncertainties, learned whole new definition of being adaptable to the changes, surprises which were both good and bad, a year of learning about all new fears. Year 2020 to me has meant all about empathy and humanity. It's been a mixed year which has entirely changed the way I look at life and the impact has been real.

This year had been a real toll in terms of mental health and adapting to the new way of living with a lot of unexpected situations to face. I almost decided not to write anything about reflecting on this year. But I decided to do it. This is my first blog post in the last 6 months. 

The year started with a lot of excitement and goals that I wanted to achieve. A lot of planning and passion went in for what I wanted to achieve and learn while I was on my Testing Tour. Setting out on Testing Tour was not just about learning topics and sharing but it was more of getting out of my comfort zone. I am so glad I took the courage to do it and it proved to be worth it. I met known and new people from across the world which was an amazing experience. 

I got introduced to the whole new topic of Observability or O11y where Abby Bangser and Shelby Spees has helped me in a way that got me hands-on with so much better understanding and clarity about this topic. Shared my learnings from Testing Tour and Observability at multiple conferences. 

 I lived in fear since I came to know about Covid-19, fear for my family who live with me and who lived back home in India. I have seen Covid effect really closely. Three of my loved ones caught it one after the other. First my Mom, then my Dad and then my brother. In this battle, I lost my Dad who was my inspiration and role model. This hit me so hard that I'm still trying to recover to come out of that loss and pain 😢 which is never going to heal. These were one of the toughest days I have ever faced.

I still wanted to look back and reflect on the good things that happened to me. 

  • Went on Testing Tour and had 15 different sessions on 15 different topics and blogged about each of those sessions. 
  • I learned about a lot more new topics and tried my hands-on with new tools. I learned about Observability, Performance testing using Jmeter, Microsoft Azure and lot more. 
  • I got an opportunity to be part of Observability for testers series organized by Anne-Marie Charrett along with Lisa Crispin and  Abby Bangser which was a great opportunity to learn and explore more about observability.

  • I gained 1076 followers crossing 1000k followers on  Twitter which for me is a huge number. 
  • I learned to listen to my mental health and say no to few of the opportunities. I had to prioritise myself over other things which I struggled initially but gradually learned that it's absolutely ok to stop and take a break to take care of yourself. 
  • When the entire world went remote, initially I was happy that I will get to work from home but gradually it became challenging to work from home with two kids around as they had their virtual school sessions. Throughout this process, I learnt not to feel guilty for not being able to give full attention to both my kids while they are on their virtual school sessions. Learnt to be patient and adapt to each day as it comes. 
  • Our testing community is not just to learn and share about all things testing but it proved to be supportive during my difficult times which I'm so thankful for. 

Reflecting on all these gave me so much happiness, confidence and pleasure 💫😇. It's always good to look back and see what you have been doing or learning on the way. Looking forward for year 2021 with an attitude of being grateful for what I have. Thanks for your time for stopping by and reading my post 🙂

 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)