Retrospective on 2022 and Resolution for 2023

Here we go, again.

Here I am making a list of good resolutions for 2023.

Wait, let’s take a step back. First let’s try to do a retrospective of my 2022 and the goals I set for myself.

Wait wait, let’s take another step back, let’s go back to the situation I was in when I set those goals.

A year ago I was about to finish my studies at the cyberhackdemy, a cybersecurity academy I was selected for in May 2021. Such a great time those months! I was almost quitting the IT world after my very bad experience at Evil Corp (Maybe I’ll look into this topic in the future), then came the CyberHackademy. There I rediscovered the pleasure of sitting in front of a terminal looking at the shell. I had amazing mentors and met really good people.

The partner company of the cyberhackademy had offered me a contract, good money. I declined them. You must be wondering why I turned down that money. Because after leaving Evil Corp I received continuous contacts from recruiters on Linkedin for that type of consultancy. When I left Evil Corp I promised myself that I would never get into a situation like this again in my life.
And those offerings reeked of Evil Corp, but with more money. And it’s not about money.

So a little over a year ago, I was worried about my job situation. Let me explain: I have no problem finding a job in IT (in 2022 I received more than 130 messages from recruiters on Linkedin), my fear was of ending up in that type of consultancy again.

Then I met Epsilon, a life changer.

From day one I have worked with the technologies that interested me in a horizontal environment. No bosses, just people with more experience and more technically prepared. In Epsilon I started making my first “professional” use of the Cloud and I went deeper into topics such as containerization technologies, Container orchestrators and Infrastructure as code policies. I’ve made so many mistakes this past year, but I’ve learned so much.

But what were the goals I set for myself at the end of 2021?

• Working at Epsilon

I did it! 12/12 :)

• Regular workouts

I did it all year until I injured my shoulder. No workouts for me in the last 2 months! :'(

• AWS Solution Architect Associate Certification

I made the mistake of not scheduling my exam date, so I practiced some mock exams but didn’t book the exam. :(

• Open a blog

I have partially achieved this goal. I wrote articles on various platforms, but I didn’t publish them all. The year isn’t over yet and I’m writing on this blog. Can I consider it a success? :)

• Getting to the finish line of the cyberhackademy

I did it! Here you can find my presentation. I was terrified of going on stage, now I would gladly do it again :D

• Spend less time locked up in my cave

I made two trips this year! Short trips, but still travel! A summer holiday by the sea and I spent four days at Lucca Comics! In addition to this, I spent about eighty days in Naples, sleeping there for 40 nights. :D

• Get my degree in Computer Science

Totally failed. I never tried an exam this year. I never tried an exam this year. I just participated in an activity that took me 3 days to validate 3 credits. I’m still 21 credits away from my graduate degree, out of 180. So I achieved a 3/24, with an overall of 159/180 for my degree

And what will be my goals for this 2023?

• I want to continue working on the technologies that interest me, trying to go deeper and deeper

I would like to learn Go, write my first Kubernetes operator and improve my IaaC and pipeline skills

• I want to improve my English

The goal for the end of the year is to understand and be understood by others when you talk about non-technical topics

• I want to workout regularly

This goal is the same, I hope I don’t get injured this year

• I want to take some certifications

The plan is to take AWS Devops Professional and the CKA. If there is time left I would also like to take some Hashicorp certifications (Terraform maybe)

• I want to go back on stage

I would like to participate in some face-to-face event as a speaker talking about Kubernetes or Terraform

• I want to publish at least one article a month on this blog

I would talk about the topics that interest me, they don’t necessarily have to be technical articles

Conclusions

I am now officially publicly committed.

And I’m ready to fail!