My 2024 Wrapped

^{Photo by Kajetan Sumila on Unsplash}

This year has been another rollercoaster ride for me. Despite the difficulties and unforeseen circumstances, I've learned a lot of valuable lessons, and I'm excited to share some of my highlights this year.

Growth

As a software engineer, I've experienced exponential growth this year, which is something that I'm really happy about. Despite the technical challenges and being exposed to an uncharted territory, I'm blessed to have awesome mentors and a great team that helped me overcome these obstacles, allowing me to learn and grow as a professional.

At Magic, we not only focus on building products to ship, but we also focus on building something that is impactful. To be able to create meaningful products, solve technical problems, and allow our people to focus more on things that matter makes me feel a sense of pride, fulfillment, and purpose.

As a new entrepreneur, I learned a lot of important lessons that I can use to scale my business in the future. From compliance, marketing, and day-to-day operations, I was able to safely navigate through the nit and gritty details of running a business. But there's one important lesson that I learn and I'd like to emphasize -- and that is to listen to customers, understand their needs, and build long-lasting relationships with them.

As someone navigating through life, I learned not to be too hard on myself, and to be more forgiving. I've been through a lot of ups and downs this year, and I've learned to be more resilient and patient. With this in mind, I started to change a few things, with focus on my health, relationships, and personal growth.

Challenges

Growth and challenges are two sides of the same coin, and this year has been a challenging one for me.

This year, I experienced burnout, which really caught me off-guard. At first, I was excited about a lot of things -- from working and building with AI to restarting my business. But as time went by, I started to feel the pressure and stress, and I became overwhelmed, feeling like I couldn't keep up with anything. I felt the weight of balancing everything I'd been working on, and I had to take a step back by taking a break from it all.

This year, I also experienced physical health issues. I had severe breakouts, which affected my self-esteem and confidence. I also had a few injuries from lifting weights, which affected my progress in the gym. Apart from these, I've had a handful of other ailments, but I'm grateful that they aren't too serious and I was able to recover from them.

Achievements

Personally, I don't think I've achieved a lot this year, but I'm thankful for my experiences and the lessons that I've learned. One notable achievement this year was being able to restart my business, which helped me achieve some form of financial stability and gave me the leeway to make more aggressive financial decisions without worrying too much in case things don't go well.

A Hopeful 2025

Despite the uncertainties, I'm still looking forward to next year. With the lessons that I've learned this year, I'm hopeful that I can do and achieve more in the next year.

Will I do bolder and riskier decisions? Who knows? I'm excited to see what the future holds for me.