The Year 2024

2024 taught me a lot of things to be very honest. I believe I understood and felt a lot of emotions including sadness, discomfort, stress, happiness, joy, and almost everything. This year I turned 19 and I am soon going to hit the number 20. Like everyone else, I am afraid for it but at the same time, I am very excited to see how my thinking process will transition and how mature it will become in the upcoming years.

2024 did not start very well I might say, the year began with a lot of stress and family-related problems which are quite personal to me and affected me a lot in the initial days of this year. That was when I started losing sleep.

With all of this, I was parallelly managing my college (offline) and working at FOSS United (remote). We were trying to pick up pace with the platform project and my final year of my diploma was towards to end. I had lost sense of what to manage and what to not. When work, final year college projects and assignments used to come altogether I used to lose all my temper and go mad. This developed a stronger hatred in my mind for education the way it is. Perhaps, I was leaning towards trying to to do more improvements at work by doing multiple jobs in tech because people were paying for my stipend from their pockets.

I completed my diploma with 67% and 0 will to go for further education. I left for Bangalore 20 days after my exam to stay for another 3 months of internship at FOSS United and I was staying with a co-colleague. That time was even harder because I was alone in Bangalore and used to have regular arguments with my parents about education. I was cautious of everything in that phase, I wanted to stay away from any kind of bad habit I would get into (ex: smoking/drinking) because I knew because of my bad mental health I would surely end up getting addicted to it. Also, during those days I had also waved a “hi” at a psychologist, and did not do the treatment for a long time because stress had left me alone during September :).

I got fired from FOSS United around September which happened to be the best thing in my life, it wasn’t the right place for me from Day 1. I was just too much into the flow and felt that it was the place where I would grow, but I feel I grew a bit after I left that workplace. I laugh on this one quote I framed “Hired at 17, Fired at 18”.

Managing money on my own is something I’ve learned a lot about this year, since I started earning some money through my stipends, I held my hands tight all the time to not spend money carelessly. I always wanted to learn to manage as if I had a family/kids. Perhaps, I wasn’t able to do it in the early days, but with time I learned to do it slowly.

Change is a word, which I have experienced this year. Being a 17-year-old, until last to last year I never realized how self-aware I should be or I am. Self-realization or knowing how deep you’re into something is very important, knowing what surroundings you’re in, criticizing yourself to improve whilst not killing yourself being under-confident is a skill which takes a lot of time to hone.

I realized, how Mediocre I am and how much mediocre work I am doing in this world which is steep in Mediocrity. I had read about one of Nikhil Kothari’s lines “Have zero tolerance for Mediocre work”. Hence, this whole year I set high standards sticking with this quote, and hated myself when I felt mediocre. But, Mediocrity walks a long, hard path.

The Software Industry has turned into a rat race there are “n” numbers of engineers who can write good code, it’s honestly flooding and overflowing like a Dam full of engineers. I am clueless and curious to see, how I will be the drop of water that will separate me from the flow.

I don’t like setting resolutions, for they are the paperweight kept on the blank paper which you should write stories and thoughts on. Removing that paper weight aside is not many can do. I just hope I indulge in reading good books, writing stories, and poems, and most importantly, setting high standards in whatever I aspire to do because I wish to always do great things.

Good Bye 2024 and Cheers to 2025.