Year In Review 2023

This is my first 'Year in review', and the motivation to write this came from Aaron Francis's year in review. So, thank you, Aaron!

At the beginning of 2023 I've wanted to start journaling because I felt like the thoughts in my head are getting too cluttered and it was hard to think straight. This was probably because of the many things me and my family had to do. Since January, we have had a bunch of tasks lined up:

• My daughter's minor surgery
• My daughter's first time going to school
• Find a bigger house (closer to the school)
• Plan for a church wedding (me and my wife did a civil wedding back in 2019)
• Start a joint habit with my wife to eat healthily and exercise (I was already obese)
• Get a cat (I thought it would be like buying a toy, but in reality, it was more like adopting a toddler)
• Start personal project
• Hunt for a new job

Although I intended to start journaling, I was only able to start doing it on December 6. Obviously, I am a chronic procrastinator. But hey, I started it and have been consistent about it since then. Also, eliminating that habit of procrastination is one of my reasons for writing. I believe it will help me understand myself better. Now that I'm into journaling, I couldn't agree more when Aaron said, "year in reviews is a helpful exercise". So here goes my review!

New house

The year was great for me and my family, moving from a condo to a bigger house was pivotal for us in many ways. Finally, our daughter wasn't stuck indoor to be raised by Youtube and Netflix. For the first time she had neighbors to play with, and a cat to take care of. These were things we knew are beneficial for her development. Also, friends and family visited more often. We had a bigger space to host dinners and parties. I'm happy we moved, we needed it!

Montessori school

She's no longer a baby! As a parent, I have this conflicting feeling of happiness and sadness. I'm happy she's growing, at the same time sad that she is. I'm going to miss the cute little feet that I could bite. But I'm also excited to see all the things that she'll accomplish.

This year, we enrolled her in a Montessori school. We believe in the Montessori way (if done correctly), we see a different kind of character with people who were raised this way. Their discipline and motivation seem more intrinsic: take Stephen Curry and Taylor Swift, for example. And you know what? So far, so good; we're happy with what we're seeing from our daughter—the habits and manners she's picking up from school have been great! She loves going to school, she loves her classmates and her teachers, she's always excited for show and tell. I feel like we made the right move.

Work! Work. Work?

Let's start with Work?

So this year a college friend and I started a Baby Diapers business. We had a Shopify store and Facebook for our online channels. We were working on pairing with hospitals to include our diapers as part of their newborn kits. And we were trying to find resellers and sub distributors. We started off the business with excitement, but as months passed my wife and I realized this just wasn't working for us. Many times, we didn't know what we were doing. Warehousing and logistics were difficult! Finding a reliable delivery rider was tough. Our last rider stole a few days worth of cash-on-delivery collection. Resolving issues with customers was draining and sometimes frustrating. I think we could have figured all these issues out if we stuck with it, but given our family's current situation, we couldn't. We were more focused with other areas of our life. So we decided to part ways with my college friend, and gave him all of our company shares as we exited that business.

Then there's work at my day job.

My day job was something I really enjoyed. I loved the people I work with and I love the things we're building. Q1 this year, the company underwent a merger and upper management when through an overhaul. Unfortunately, company changes involved a bunch of layoffs. I was asked to select a few members from my team to let go. It was a tough decision and I had to break the news to them myself. As a team lead, it's heartbreaking to let go of people you love working with and who did no wrong. Since the layoffs, the team engagement dropped and enthusiasm to work flatlined. From there moving forward, everybody was just going thru the motions. For the rest of the year, there was a hovering feeling of job insecurity. To make the long story short, the company eventually shut down the entire Philippine team in Q4 this year.

Despite all the events within the company, it was still a productive year for me. I learned a bunch of stuff and did a bunch of integration work with some of these interesting tools and services: CData Sync, Fivetran, DBT Core, Builder.io

My personal projects: here I'm excited to work!

So this year, I released a couple of public packages. One is under the company's Github organization and another is under mine. I am new to this public contribution thing so it was fun learning and building it. These packages are not refined yet, but to me that's ok for now. As a first timer, my goal was just to get started.

• solgenpower/laravel-openweather We used this on the app we built to collect weather information from OpenWeather.
• princejohnsantillan/id-base-converter A tiny tool to make it easy to encode integers into different bases or into a symbol set of your own. Please do try it out!

I'm looking forward to building more stuff!

Wife and life

I married the love of my life back in 2019; it was a civil wedding. It wasn't the best start. A lot of rebellion was involved and we got pregnant outside of wedlock. It caused a lot of issues, strained a lot of relationships, and we found ourselves isolated from church, family, and friends. The details do not belong in this post so this is just an overview of what happened.

We admit to the mistake we made. It was bad, we did wrong. It was a season full of pain, anger, disappointment, loneliness, doubt, and confusion. But we held on, little by little humbled ourselves, allowed the Lord to correct us, and reconciled with everybody we've hurt. It took 5 years to reach a point where we feel like everything was redeemed and back in its place. So here we are now; we want to celebrate God's redemption with a church wedding that's totally dedicated to His goodness.

2024: New beginnings!

So 2024! I'm excited! My family is looking forward to this. We know it's gonna be a year full of new beginnings for us. The church wedding is the flipping of a new page, a new chapter, a new season of our lives.

The past few years for me was full of personal growth. I am determined and very curious to see what my life will look like and what my family will look like if I put everything in order.

In terms of physical health, I started to eat healthily and do consistent exercise. I haven't figured all of this out yet, but the journey has started. I'm looking into keto and fasting, and eating a lot of greens. My wife and I are following Caroline Girvan for our workouts. And, sleep! I averaged 4-5 hours of sleep over the last couple of years. That needs to change! I am reorganizing my life to have 6-8 hours of sleep.

For mental and emotional health, I started journaling. I'm also committed to reading more books this year.

All in all, 2024 is a year for me to build good habits. I believe good habits is a prerequisite to any kind of success.