2019: A Year In Review

Deepak Kumar
4 min readMar 14, 2020

It’s the 14th of March 2020. Due to #CoronaVirus, I am working home today. And, I was curious about life, the progress so far.

In this hyperconnected world, where information reaches millions in a few minutes, the FOMO(fear of missing out) gets real.

It’s has been already two months in 2020, and here I am reviewing my 2019. Well, it’s never too late to start. So, let’s take a recap of the last year of the decade.

From starting a startup, graduating, starting freelancing, shutting down the startup, joining and leaving an MNC, making the first international trip, a lot has happened this year.

The final Semester has just started and thus the placements. Everyone I knew was already placed or were looking for some new opportunities. I also had an internship offer from a good startup. But, I decided not to join. This is how the roller coaster ride of 2019 started.

Career

  • Founded a startup in college, FrontBench. Built a community of more than 50 students from different colleges in India to help promote the initiative. It was always my dream to startup while in college. That got accomplished, but I learned that the Idea is just 1% rest is your patience and persistence and how you execute. The journey was full of learning.
FrontBench Founding Team
  • Got Featured on the official LinkedIn page.
Featured on LinkedIn
  • After quiting the startup, I joined an MNC. Yes, I regret it. The series of events that happened that times made me insecure. However, I left it in a couple of months and joined an early age startup.
  • 2019 was full of learning new technology and building. Starting from Android Development in 2017, Deep Learning in 2018 to Full Stack Web Development in 2019. I tried it all. I am not trying to be the master of all jack but explored fields according to requirement. Be a Problem Solver, not a tech stack guy.
  • Later in the year, deep-dived into learning Core Javascript, ReactJS and full-stack web development.
  • Gave 2 talks in a different college.

Life

  • I started journaling and writing my thoughts. It helped me a lot in reviewing my past, learning from it and connecting dots in the future. Now whenever I feel low, I just read those journals. And, I again feel motivated realizing “This too shall pass”.
  • I failed to build a habit, whether it is to wake up in the morning, read books daily, meditation or exercise. I failed.
  • I failed to meet some of my goals, yeah a lot of goals.

Travel

  • I did my first International trip. And, it was the beautiful Lisbon, Portugal. I went there to attend the WebSummit’19.
  • Traveled to Rishikesh with friends and escaped drowning in the Ganges River.
  • I learned to drive this year, drove approx 1000km from Delhi to Patna.
Rishikesh, India
Lisbon, Portugal
Lisbon, Portugal

Reading / Writing

  • Read a lot of books in 2019.
  • Started Journaling, it really helped me a lot. I am thinking to do daily bullet journaling in 2020.
  • I failed to create enough content like blogs, videos that I planned.

What do I want in 2020?

  • Be the best in what I do, Software Development.
  • Read at least 10 books. I will post it soon.
  • Write at least 50 posts on Medium and Dev.to this year. Target to reach 1M users.
  • Learn about Personal Finance, stocks, investment, and capitalism.
  • I want to complete a 10km Marathon.
  • Learn freestyle swimming.
  • I wanted to speak at more meetups/events/conferences this year. Bad Luck due to #CoronaOutbreak, I guess.

And. I will keep pushing new goals on this stack.

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Deepak Kumar

sharing insights on AI, software development, designing scalable system