My 2020 Year in Review 🥳
Published: 2020-12-30 07:44:20

I have never written a year in review before but thought it would be worth taking a look back and reflecting.

1. This year I am extremely proud of the work I did at work🎉🎉. As a backend developer, one of my focuses was to increase my productivity in DevOps. I dreamt of having an opportunity to set up the infrastructure to be able to deploy and run the services in production. Fortunately, we were writing a new service and this required all of it. I spent time working on setting up the deployment pipeline with GitActions, writing the Docker files for building the application image, Kubernetes for container orchestration, AWS Serverless for running the Lambda function. I am incredibly happy that I did this because it was so much fun doing this.

2. I couldn't have asked for better teammates. Kudos to the small achievements we achieved together. Happy to be part of the team that has the only girl developer in the entire organization 😃🙃

2. I fulfilled my [2020 Reading Challenge 📚](https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/20679341) The plan was to have consistency over speed.
If you want to help me, you can [join me on Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/48877092-vinaya-nayak) (very open to recommendations as well!)

3. Built a perfect home office 🖥️ ⌨️ 🖱️ 🪑set up for myself. Spent quite some time checking and trying stuff but in the end, it's all worth investing in it. Thanks to my employer for the support.

4. Learning German was something I did consistently this year and I am incredibly thankful for an old German lady whom we met over the newsletter from [Woholo](https://www.woloho.com/). I am happy to say that I am more than a beginner and I can confidently speak to any random person or to the Customer care 😎 We moved into a new apartment and we managed most of the bureaucracy in German 🎉🎉

5. Outside of work, I met many people over the internet on [Nebenan.de](http://nebenan.de/) and Reddit and made some good friends. Found good communities to play board games and joined local play clubs.

6. Been practicing Yoga. Winter times were hard due to the low daylight but compensated with a walk in the neighborhood after work. Again the plan was to be consistent.

7. Spent more virtual time with my nieces 👯‍♀️ & nephew🧍‍♂️and taught basic German 😇 No matter what, I just love the way  they say Bye(Tschüss) in German

8. One of the favorite things that happened this year is getting to spend more time with my house plants. I managed to propagate a few, re-pot a few, kill a few and save a few through the winters. I write about my experiences and you can find [beautiful pictures of them here](https://www.instagram.com/vinayanayak/)
Besides this, I started a [side project](https://github.com/vinayanayak88/greenskeeper) to maintain their watering history.

9. One of my goals was to learn to crochet but I couldn't do it this year. Instead, I learned [mat weaving] (https://www.instagram.com/p/CHpVMt6FosD/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link)

What I look forward to in 2021:
* Involve me in architectural decisions
* Looking forward to hiring a women developer in the team
* Proficiency in German
* Read 15 books
* Bike to office
* To continue what I am doing

Wrapping Up 🎁
Thank you to everyone who inspired me this year. You all are a part of my journey and my success, and I’m incredibly grateful to have you.

Happy New Year!