The greatest approach to start a new year is to look back on all that has happened in the previous one.

I was a part-time backend developer, a part-time-to-freelance full-stack developer, and a high school student at the start of this year. I occasionally participated in youth activities in my city, and it allowed me to learn so much in many different ways.

After having to stop working as a backend developer a few months later, I had slightly more time and a lot of curiosity to learn more about Solidity, smart contracts, and the blockchain.
Building an NFT Marketplace was the bigger project I took on in the upcoming months, where I would work on over the summer for the company I was already working for. That included the front-end, back-end, blockchain and the AWS cloud – a real rollercoaster of bugs, errors and deadlines! 😬

Being only 18, I had the good fortune to experience my first startup failure. My application for grant funding in my nation was rejected, but the 200+ hours I spent researching startup-related topics (whether it’s about product development, communications, economy or law-related things) were worth it. There will definitely be more experiences or “failures” as some would say), but in my belief, the 18-to-25-year-old age range is when you can and probably should fall, get back up, try again, possibly fail again, then try again and again.

Nearly three months later, I moved to Germany, began my studies at 42 Heilbronn, and despite the challenges that come with moving, I couldn’t be happier with my decision, because apart from hard skills, there are a dozen of soft skills that I see potential in developing during the upcoming years. Our thinking, our objectives, and our future intentions are in fact shaped by the environment around us.

The challenges, the demanding days, the restless nights, but most importantly my trips, are the memories I cherish most from this year.
Having the opportunity to travel and see a tiny bit more of this world allowed me to have a different perspective on many things, from how I perceive things to how I analyze and solve problems, whether they are linked to coding or not.

And to wrap up this post, my main takeaway from 2022:
Being trapped in our comfort zones and our minds is exactly what keeps us from discovering what this world has to offer.