Here we are at the end of 2020 and oh wow what a year. I was flipping through my bullet journal recently looking at all of the goals I had set at the end of 2019 and all of the travel plans I was looking forward to with no idea of what lay ahead.

If there was one thing that this year taught me, it’s that anything is possible. Literally anything. Looking back on this year, I am surprised by how much progress I made towards living the life I dreamed of despite all the challenges we all faced. But that’s never the full picture so I’m going to do my best to reflect here on my highlights, challenges, and takeaways from 2020.

My Highlights

Working from home while living in a log cabin in Vermont

This is a dream I’ve had for the longest time. As most of you know I was working in NYC and lived in Jersey City, NJ (just across the Hudson River) for just over 1 year before the pandemic hit. I know it sounds strange, but living in the city was never a selling point for me. When I was in college, I had always imagined myself moving to the Bay area or Colorado or Montana and working remotely even before this quarantine work from home situation hit. So in a way it was a dream come true for me to move in with my family that had recently relocated to a log cabin in Vermont and work remotely full time (obviously I wish it had happened under different circumstances).

I am lucky to be so so close with my immediate family and it has been the most incredible blessing to be able to spend so much time together. I went to boarding school and moved out of the house when I was 14 - between that, going to college, and my sister going to university in Scotland my family hasn’t spent this much time together for almost 10 years.

Changing to a new team and position at work

After just over 1 year on my first team full time I made the switch to a new team just as we went into lockdown and work from home mode. I had no idea all the amazing things that this new change would bring. Not only did it put me in a position where I was coding every day, but also I was able to gain a whole new set of domain knowledge centering around private equity. I’ve always been really interested in entrepreneurship and venture capital so my switch also helped me acquire domain knowledge that I hope will help me when I decide to start my own business. 

Reaching over 11K+ views of this blog

One of the goals I had set for myself at the beginning of 2020 was to increase the number of pageviews on my blog from 2019 and I succeeded! It still amazes me that there were over 11K+ views of my blog from a very global audience. I remember when I was around 10 years old and wanting to be a published author. I never imagined that I would be able to reach so many people around the world and I find it to be a really inspiring testament to the power of the internet today. 

Starting a monthly newsletter

This is something that I have wanted to do ever since I was a college student and I did for a short while when I was the co-president of my university’s Women in Computer Science club. Even though a lot of tech opportunities were free (workshops, hackathons, conferences) it was such a challenge to find them. I spent hours in my free time learning about scholarships, workshops, hackathons and more yet when I talked to other students they wouldn’t attend simply because they didn’t know! Now that I work full time, it’s become even more difficult to stay on top of these opportunities. I’m really proud that I’ve created a newsletter to share with my community the opportunities and resources that I’ve found and deliver it straight to their inbox in ONE concise email newsletter each month. By the way in case you want to subscribe... you can do that here.

Starting a podcast AND YouTube channel with my sister!

Alright I’ll be honest I almost forgot about this one but wow was this a highlight! It has been amazing having my sister Ashley at home with me. We have been separated by an ocean for the last 4 years and it has been incredible having her live just down the hallway now! Our podcast SisterCodes was born, I’ll admit it, mostly out of quarantine boredom but we both were really interested in learning a new form of content creation and I personally love it. I’ve always been a big podcast listener and it’s been so cool to go through the process of buying a mic, recording episodes, editing, and producing a podcast with my sister! The SisterCodes YouTube channel followed naturally because I’ve always loved editing and filming videos (mostly of my former travel days!) but we are also loving making video content together.

Presenting a workshop at vGHC 2020

I have dreamed of being a GHC speaker ever since I first attended the conference in 2017 and this finally came true! It was a year-long process from the inception of the idea all the way through to submitting the proposal, being accepted, and then creating the content and rehearsing. Despite it being a ton of work, it was an amazing moment knowing that I was able to reach 500 attendees and share my insights and advice on building a career in tech. This reaffirmed for me that all the work I do creating content not just here as part of Just a Coder Thing but more broadly to help other women find their place in tech is one of the ways I find fulfillment. Helping others is so important to me and I am going to continue to search for ways to maximize the impact I can have.

Becoming co-lead of a working group within my company’s Women in Engineering network

Shortly after I started working full time I joined a working group within my company’s Women in Engineering network that hosted a monthly roundtable with senior leaders from across the company. After volunteering with the group for just over a year I was asked in June 2020 to become a co-lead! I have to say, of all the work I do at my company, the work I do within the Women in Engineering network brings me the most personal fulfillment. It can be difficult to get that solely from completing JIRA tickets so becoming a co-lead of this group is a real highlight for me.

My Challenges

Switching teams in the middle of a pandemic

I can’t emphasize enough how terrifying it was to make this switch right as we were working from home. To this day, I haven’t met a single one of my team members in person and I was anxious about having to rebuild my reputation on a team where we weren’t interacting in-person. My anxiety and imposter syndrome the first few weeks on my new team were through the roof. In fact, even the night before I started on my new team I was questioning my decision to switch and felt confident that my success on my first team was a fluke. Spoiler alert -- it wasn’t! In fact, I merged in my first PR on day 5 of joining my new team and after many many weeks of feeling like an outsider I was able to acclimate to my new role.

Related | A New Chapter: Quarantine Edition

Moving out of my apartment

One of the hardest parts about this pandemic was having to make decisions without any official guidance from my company. To date - my company has not released any sort of statement about the status of our work from home arrangement. This has caused me so much anxiety especially when I quickly realized that I was spending almost $3K in rent on an apartment that I no longer lived in. I’m really happy that I made the decision to buy out my lease in June, but I was so anxious about being asked to return to office with no place to live AND I had to pack and move out of my apartment during a pandemic only a few months after NYC was the epicenter of covid-19 in the USA. I do not wish this on anybody -- moving already sucks and having to wear masks and coordinating movers all while worried that I might be exposing myself to Covid was one of the most stressful days. 

Overwork and burnout

Combined with the fact that we were working at home, my switch to a new team did nothing to help me keep my work life balance in check. The lines between work and home got blurrier and blurrier as the pandemic stretched on. 8 hour days turned into 10 and then 12 hour days and aside from sleeping and the occasional meal there are months of 2020 that I don’t really remember anything about. I definitely let this go too far before stepping on the brakes and taking a step back. To date- I think my mental health deficit that I’ve accumulated is going to need a sizable amount of time off at some point. I’ve personally always struggled with saying NO and prioritizing my health but this year took that to new heights. In some ways, it was easier to surround myself with work than it was to have to process the fact that I couldn’t leave my home. 

Planning for the future

It’s felt like someone has pressed the pause button and in some ways I’ve felt suspended in limbo for most of 2020. Attempting to make plans or any future decision felt completely undoable since circumstances could change in a matter of days. As someone who has always been a goal oriented person this was really difficult for me to adjust to. Learning to go with the flow and be present have never been my strengths and I was forced to confront both this year.

Takeaways

While I am immensely proud of myself for the things I accomplished in 2020, I think more than anything it has taught me that anything is possible. When I used to tell people I wanted to live on a remote property somewhere in the woods and be a full time software engineer, they would always tell me that it would never happen. Even during this time of extreme uncertainty where nothing is “normal” it has taught me that we create our “normal”. Now that it’s over I can appreciate 2020 for forcing me to slow down, reconnect with my family and nature, and giving me the time to reflect and introspect. In a year where so much happened to all of us, I’m looking forward to 2021 and being more intentional with the things I choose to spend my energy on so that I can realign with what’s most important.