Learning to be happy, and the year 2022

Hola! This is Greeshma, a tech girl from the next door, who is learning to grow in this big world and building herself one step a day. While I struggle with my anxiety, here's me trying to destructure and rebuild myself. This blog is one where I reflect upon my year. Feel free to share what your year looked like!

Putting my thoughts on the internet is something I struggle with, especially because of my fear of me sounding silly. Intimidated that, my struggle to just show up to do things every day is menial compared to what others achieve in their lives. 😅

But, this year, I am pushing myself to write, essentially to bring clarity to thought, and practice my writing... while also appreciating the small things and the people around me 😇

So, what about my year? My biggest fear stepping into 2022 was that it is gonna be the same, me struggling with making progress, both personally and technically. I was high on FOMO and my anxiety, so much so, that I didn't really acknowledge the new year.

But cut to now, I am happy to see, I pushed myself into things and did just fine. I got to take part in the various fests at my college and re-discovered my love for dance and technology. 💜

I plunged into the design for a bit and helped with designing our department’s annual magazine, which turned out pretty nice! I also observed my liking for UI Design and am experimenting with it to create accessible User Interfaces.

In my second year at college, I had envisioned speaking/teaching something to the students at my college, and a year later, I did! I took the opportunity to share the knowledge I had about Git and GitHub. Though I am no expert, I found it essential to talk about these tools, especially when I noticed the lack of awareness about the same. 🤔

Then came DevFest Goa ’22, the annual event conducted by Google Developer Groups across the globe. Volunteering for DevFest was delightful! With a team of just 9 folks, we pulled off the entire event here in Goa, with the help of our humble organizer Prajyot Mainkar. Meeting him and observing his passion to build a community here, inspires me!

The event itself was a perfect combination of learning, networking and having fun 😁 Being my first ever in-person dev event, I took the opportunity to connect with people I had only ever seen on LinkedIn. The experience taught me how a community can change people and influence them for good. (I shall pen down a separate blog one day about it :D)

Moving into the end of the year, I finally plunged into freelancing. The monetary aspect of it has always scared me 😅(pls tell me I am not the only one). But being surrounded by friends who were ready to guide me, I took the chance to explore freelancing. While the project is still on, I am learning quite a lot about my current skillset in Web Development, and am planning to upskill further, to deliver my best!

In a nutshell, 2022 was sweet 🙌. The best part of it all was making good friends <3

Getting lost in the highs and lows is easy, but moving past them and pushing yourself to keep trying, is what makes us humans so unique ✨ One takeaway from 2022:

In a world where you easily compare yourself with others, on every inch of progress made, it is important to acknowledge that it's okay to not have it all figured out. Take it a little easy on yourself, and learn to appreciate everyone 🤍

I write this as I realize another year has come to an end. I would call 2023 the year of hope. Hoping to thrive and nurture my ambitions, as well as those around me 😊

PS: This blog is a non-technical writing of mine. If you did give it a read, thank you! Also, I would love to hear how your year unfolded :D

#2022 #mentalhealth #learning