The 2020!

2020 was hell of a year and I mean that not as an idiom but literally it was hellish. But I learned a lot in 2020. Let it be how to actually drive a car or do Yoga, it’s all due to 2020. I’ve only been around the Sun for 20 times.As of Jan 1 2021, I’m only 20.5 years old.

2020 gave me a new view on life. Too much Kurzgesagt give you an existential crisis mind. I questioned about the point of life. What’s actually the point of living on this big pile of silica? What difference does our life actually make? These were my thoughts for a few months but I later moved past that. There is no point in over-thinking this stuff.

2020 taught me how social interactions matter. Personally I see a lot of people everyday and speak with them, 2020 gave a stoppage to all that. I acquired(not proud of it) Social Anxiety. I feared to talk to people whom I don’t know about especially on Virtual Meetings. I guess I overcame that.

2020 gave me a new perspective on Cinema. All the credits go to my brother for that. I watched old movies. Movies before my birth, It’s just sad to watch movies of today compared to that. Other than a handful movies, all are cliched to a huge extent.

2020 showed me the value of people. It taught me about grief and loss. 2020 took a friend from me. The day before we were playing cards and Mini Militia in home balcony and the next day he wasn’t there. I still remember his favorite dialog from KGF.

2020 taught me how to manage money. Money can’t buy you happiness, it just increases the stress of being you. It increases the responsiblities you have on your family.

2020 taught how a competitive work environment actually works and the need for asking questions to stuff that you don’t know. It showed me how incompetent I am and not very consistent at anything. May be I have Dunning-Kruger.

2020 gave me a lot of time and books to read. Sadly I didn’t even complete a single book.

2020 gave me a new perspective on Malayalam music. It’s pretty cool per se.

2020 gave me chances to work on many side projects. I still remember last Jan 1, I posted about Shelby and it was my first project to reach 100+ stars on GitHub. My highest repo stars is 300+.

2020 made me learn more about automating stuff and RSS feeds. I’ve made a few telegram bots as my Feedreader for the day. I mainly use it for Lobsters Front Page

2020 taught me to hack in Virtual hackathons. Discord was the saviour.

2020 taught me how to let go of my fears. Main fear is not achieving anything after college and being a zero in Life as a whole.

2020 made me realize how fat I was getting. Being tall and fat is bad combination.

2020 gave me my first Salary. It was from an Internship and not any side gig.

2020 was the year of the SPAMfam. It showed me what it means to be in a technical community.

2020(Feb) showed me new places. I travelled to another state and a beach with my classmates.

2020 taught me how to use LaTeX with KaTeX.

2020 taught me more about Python and Code. I discovered many new sides of Code and the importance of putting a space between and = symbol. I even got to work on a mainstream project by the HoppScotch team and worked on lots of side projects in the mean time. It taught me the importance of commenting code and how to refactor the code you wrote a few months ago.

2020 made it possible for me to meet some Amazing people in the Tech Community. It showed me how to handle an online event.

2020 gave me new tech to play with. I got a new Amazon Echo and a Mechanical Keyboard. I also managed to but a new Phone and Headphones. The me in 2018 never even dreamt of buying a new phone nor a wireless headphone before graduating college, I considered these stuff as luxury. I still do. I even got a ton of Tshirts, stickers and a Bag this year. Google gave a pair of Headphones which was so cool. Auth0 gave a lot of tshirts. GitHub gave a cup and a wholesome video. Twilio gave a cup and a tshirt. Dev.to gave a backpack.

2020 was the first time I have been gifted a Book and the first time I actually bought one. Thanks to Nadeem Ikka and deta.sh team for the books.

2020 was the year which I realized blogging actually makes 💸.

2020 taught me how to sell Wooden planks and getting a profit from them. The mechanical keyboard community came to the rescue.

2020 taught me how to use Vim in a better way. I switched my code editor from VsCode to Vim. Except for debugging.