There's more to life than work/school/career 🌺🌺
Tags: showdev, watercooler, yearinreview
Published: 2020-01-01 01:52:54

# **Hi there 👋**

I thought about it quite a lot over the past few months, it took me a while to get ready, but after 6 months of graduation, I have finally decided to live my life at my own terms. This is a bold move for me - someone who was at an edge of depression and had existential crisis couple of years back.

**This is a big ol' list of things / decisions / events happened to me ~~in~~ from 2019 - ~~2020~~:**

- Graduated from college 🎓
- Joined in [Zartek Technologies](https://www.zartek.in) under Kerala Startup Mission
- Made [👽 Postwoman](https://postwoman.io)
- Turned 24 🌼
- Joined [☕ Buy me a coffee](https://www.buymeacoffee.com)
- Traveling 🌇 became my favorite thing
- Stopped 🛑 using Facebook and Instagram
- I spend more time drawing ✏️ and playing guitar 🎸
- Had [my first 📢 Tech talk](https://twitter.com/liyasthomas/status/1182225864626331650) at Technopark - India's largest IT zone
- Participated in Hacktoberfest 🐙
- 1,000+ followers on 💙 [Twitter](https://twitter.com/liyasthomas)
- 11,400+ followers on [Dev](https://dev.to/liyasthomas) 👨‍💻👩‍💻
- Made a Bucket list 🔥
- Adele, Taylor swift, Eminem and Post Malone became my favorite artists 🎶
- Listened lot of music 🎵
- Became an ⚛️ Atheist
- Read around ~50 books 📚
- Read more on Philosophy, money, finance and life 📖
- [Postwoman](https://postwoman.io) won [Tyk.io](https://tyk.io) [Side Project Fund](https://tyk.io/fund)
- Started my next project 🚀
- I got an offer for a Senior react developer post in Berlin in which I failed miserably ✨
- Postwoman rebranded to [Hoppscotch](https://hoppscotch.io) 🎯
- Paid off educational loan - became debt free
- Got interviewed for Facebook Solutions Engineer role in which the recruiter never replied after first round 😅
- Joined [📊 Sensibull](https://sensibull.com)
- My mom googled my name and called crying to tell me how proud she was of me because of all the wonderful things she found - I've officially made it ❤
- Relived from day job to start working on side hustles 💯
- Won [Contributor of the Year - TESTING](https://noonies.tech/award/hacker-noon-contributor-of-the-year-testing) and [Contributor of the Year - FUNDRAISING](https://noonies.tech/award/hacker-noon-contributor-of-the-year-fundraising) Hacker Noon - Noonies 2020 awards 🏆
- Project [ebb](https://ebb.vercel.app) won FOSS India Hackathon ☘️
- Participated in dozens of podcasts and blogs
- Participated in 🐙 GitHub Open Source Friday
- Hopscotch got featured in GitHub's [Made in India Collection](https://github.com/collections/made-in-india) 🇮🇳
- Started contributing to appwrite on part-time
- Building a crib 🏡
- Building [Kooli 💵](https://kooli.tech)
- Won 2 hackathons organized by Hashnode
- Spoke at [GitHub satellite](https://githubsatellite.com/sessions/journey-of-a-project-made-in-india-hoppscotch)
- [Hoppscotch](https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch) crossed over 180k+ users and 28,000 GitHub stars
- Project [Lvr](https://github.com/liyasthomas/lvr) won [Tyk Side Project Fund](https://tyk.io/fund) - I won Tyk Side Project Fund 2nd time in a row. First one was for Hoppscotch - the initial investment.
- [Hoppscotch](https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch) now has 500k+ users and 34,000 GitHub stars
- Raised $3m seed round for Hoppscotch
- Interviewed at GitHub README project
  - [✨ Story](https://github.com/readme/stories/liyas-thomas)
  - [🎙️ Podcast](https://github.com/readme/podcast/liyas-thomas)


I don't want to spend the rest of my 20's consumed trying to reach a level of success other people defined. I want to travel, form great bonds, go to meditation retreats, ride on hot air balloons, go to raves, etc. To me life should be full of adventures.

If you want to succeed in your life, remember this phrase. The past does not equal the future. Because you failed yesterday; or all day today, or a moment ago, or for the last six months; the last 16 years, or the last fifty years of life doesn’t mean anything… all that matters is what are you going to do, right now.

_I'll be updating this list as I recall them._

So that basically means I'll be less active on dev.to and other platforms ~~including OSS~~, but will be having a lot of time with my loved ones and open source community.

If you want a heads up on my next projects, or just want to chat about the web, life and happiness make sure to follow me [@liyasthomas](https://twitter.com/liyasthomas) on Twitter 💙.