Year of Opportunities, Healthy Lifestyle & Validations: 2021

The Year Wrap Blog

Thumbnail Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Unsplash

The year 2021 has been the most hopeful and mixed year of all time. From surviving another deadly coronavirus wave in India, losing a relative, welcoming a newborn in the family, getting exciting opportunities, and living a healthy lifestyle, it was a total rollercoaster ride.

The Coronavirus Spread

2020 was considered one of the worst years in terms of coronavirus spread but turns out 2021 took it more seriously. India saw the maximum spread of coronavirus spread compared to last year. The situation became more critical when the needy patients were short of essentials such as oxygen cylinders, proper medication, and treatment. The situation was so much worse that there was waiting/no place for bodies to be cremated. The entire country had to re-impose lockdown which affected millions of businesses. The year which all of us were thinking that we would finally return to our normal routine was not the case. Instead, it was the complete opposite.

There was so much shortage of essentials that the tech and social media community had to create online tools to make it easier for essential providers to reach the needy people effectively.

Twitter became the main source of such information. The tech community-developed tools such as Twitter Tweets aggregators whose main purpose was to make it easier to access all the essential information in one place. This became a trend and my LinkedIn was flooded with projects with this aim.

I lost 15 kgs!

From the beginning, I was not concerned about what I consumed. I would eat anything that I find tasty. I never hesitated to spend money on expensive food. This taste of tongue resulted in me being an unhealthy person. Earlier, I used to say that I don’t care about being a foodie but this year I realized that it’s all about how you take care of yourself. I had this self-realization in March’21 and at that time my weight was a few kgs less than a 1 quintal! I hit the gym and after that, there was no turning back. I ran, ran, and did a lot of workouts.

Yes, there were a few moments where I felt that this is all useless and I could spend this time in something else but the result is what matters the most. Cut short to present, now, I could fit in my old clothes. The body is slowly getting into shape. I have not completely left fast food but the frequency is reduced way to less. Now I am more conscious of what I consume and I don’t want to return to the older version of myself.

Lots of Opportunities

2021 has been the greatest year of all time in terms of the opportunities I received. My LinkedIn, Gmail, Twitter was flooded with writing projects! I have been offered almost all the roles in the writing community: Tech Journalist, Creative Content Writer, a lot of Freelancing projects, and yes, of course, technical content writer. I cannot disclose any of the companies and individuals who reached out to me, but yes, one thing I can say is that most of you had heard of those companies and individuals. I had to reject most of them as in the second half of the year, I had entered my final year of college. The final year of college is the time when we have to decide our career path. At the time of writing this year’s wrap, I still haven’t made any decision yet and just got an email from a big open-source company that wants me to hire as a technical writer. Am I having a feeling of FOMO for the offers? Probably yes!

One opportunity I used the most was the Analytics Vidhya Data Science Blogathons. These are blog writing competitions where participants submit blogs and every valid submission gets rewarded. I have been publishing my blogs freely on Medium and now it was time to earn some capital out of blogging. I participated in 5–6 editions of this competition and wrote 20 articles. All of them were rewarded a good amount. In one of the editions, I took up the challenge of 7 days 7 blogs which I completed. Though it was very hard to keep up with the flow, I managed to pull off this.

Started Working as an Intern

In 2020, I did a so-called internship which later came out as a training program. I was so much disappointed with my decision that my new year resolution for 2021 was to at least experience one good internship! I did succeed in this and got myself 2 internships out of which, the second one is still ongoing!

The first internship I did was a “Machine Learning Writer Internship” in the May-June period for Machine Learning Plus company. It is an educational platform where they publish highly researched courses at affordable prices. The mentors are highly skilled and industry experts working in top MNCs. The team was highly supportive and I got it to learn a lot of skills. Technical skills included Pandas & NumPy’s in-depth knowledge and a few statistics concepts. My work was to create short, syntax-based blogs. Almost all my blogs are published there. Other skills included time management, soft skills, and usage of Asana.

My current internship at Prodigal Technologies is something special. I applied through Cuvette, a startup that helps in getting legitimate and good internships. I randomly applied via Cuvette and I was selected for interviews. I had to go through 4 rounds of interviews. These 4 interviews were the best 4 interviews of 2021! The interviewers, now part of the team :), were way too understanding and I had the best time explaining my projects and experiences. Presently, I am very much happy with the working environment. My work here is also very interesting and I have learned a bunch of new things. From new tech stacks such as MongoDB to management and communication skills, this internship experience will require a separate article! The company also sent an awesome Diwali gift!

Gadgets Upgraded

I did a lot of freelancing work in 2020 and therefore, received enough capital to invest in my tech gear. I upgraded to a premium smartphone and bought a new smart tv with 50% investment from my side. I also got an unexpected gift from Analytics Vidhya, where I was the winner of a random lucky draw for one of the blogathon editions and got myself a brand new iPad 8th gen 2020!

Appreciation from Community

This year, I got a lot (a lot!) of messages on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Gmail about how my articles have helped them to complete their projects. How the articles gave them new ideas or how they used them as a resource for their master’s degree! I was touched reading all those messages.

This year I was recognized as one of the top 10 authors on Analytics Vidhya among 500+ authors! I was amazed by how the community is reading and using my articles as resources!

Meeting Friends and Family Trips

In 2020, everybody was at home. I also came home in March 2020 and after that, I never stepped out of my state. 2021 1st quarter was a bit light for covid spread and therefore, I went on a family vacation to Vaishno Devi. Then, 2nd wave was at its peak and after that was flattened, I went on another trip with the family to Vrindavan. In the past 2 months, the curve was a bit flat and that’s when I decided to meet my Delhi friends after 1.8 years! It was a great experience, traveling after so long time!

Now, at the year-end, and around my birthday, we again decided to go on a trip and we went for 4 days road trip to Dharamshala (HP) and Amritsar (Punjab)! This was a next-level experience and I fully enjoyed this last trip of 2021!

EndNotes

As stated earlier also, this year was a rollercoaster but it ended up me being happy with whatever I am doing right now. For the record, I have completed: 425k views on Medium and approximately 200k views on Analytics Vidhya. A total of 146 articles have been published.

THE END