2020 and Beyond
Published: 2020-01-01 22:53:52

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title: 2020 and Beyond
published: true
description: A look back and a look forward
tags: 
---
## New Year's
It's a time for reflection. Part of reflecting is looking where you want to go since you have to assess where you are coming from in order to obtain where you are going. This means most blogging and social media are being flooded with resolutions and introspection. Here lies a record, for me only really, that I want to use as a guide for 2020 and even further if it is still applicable. If a read other than myself gets anything out of it, that will be a bonus for me.

## What 2019 Was For Me
This year was for me more transformative than any year. I was able to reaffirm my faith. I was also able to see that my current job was demanding too much time away from things like family and faith. In the last 3 months of the year, I decided that my 2020 dedication would be to find a job with a better work-life balance while still being able to provide for my family and moving into my chosen career field, development. I started and stopped doing regular programming and blogging throughout 2019 and you can see that in my past articles, but I want to dedicate the first 3 months of 2020 to have a more consistent schedule.

Now, with the meager time I was able to commit to web development, I learned 2 new skills that I want to strengthen into the new year. I built my portfolio website using Gatsby and fell in love with the quick deployment/build cycle. I am using Netlify to host it and there was nothing to learn there, just plug in your git repo and off you go. I was able to tie it to my personal domain and get SSL running on it through Netlify as well. Hands down the easiest experience of 2019. I also started learning Apollo and GraphQL using the [Advanced React course from Wes Bos](https://advancedreact.com/). I am not affiliated with Wes Bos in any way, but I want to mention it since it was an excellent course for learning.

Personally, everything has started to look up. My wife has been going through treatments for a health issue and she has made such amazing progress and feels so much better. We are starting to work on what I consider the hardest part of being married, finances. Working out how to save, what to save, and, more importantly, what to spend on has been a struggle for us over the last 3 months but is essential when I am starting to look for new work. I have also started reading again thanks to an investment made to a Kindle for a Christmas gift. I never fell out of love with reading but the stress of life forced me to think it was such an unimportant thing.

## 2020 Goals and Beyond
I look forward to two major things this year, becoming better disciplined with development and finding my first job as a developer. I have already started to see what is available to me for my career inception. Hopefully, I can find something that will allow the transition between careers to be a lot less stressful than I am currently stressing about. I will be looking for work in my area but I think most of the places I want to work would require me to work remotely or relocate; having an open mind during this process will be essential.

I want to complete my first full scall React/Apollo/GraphQL application before March of this year. I have the framework done and I am getting all of the logic completed now. There will be a blog post to follow this about working with React hooks in Apollo since I just picked that up last night (Happy New Year to me indeed!). 

These are my reflections. What about you? It seems silly that humans picked an arbitrary time of every year to reflect on their lives, but it is an essential part of being a well-rounded human being. Happy New Year to everyone reading this and I wish you success with whatever you have decided was important to you.