No matter how uneventful last year may seem at first glance, there were still events, people, and milestones that marked 2021 as a year of many firsts, many new and unexpected events or actions I would never have thought possible. I want to dwell on them here and now, to reflect on how they influenced me, and maybe even see what I should or could work on in the future.
It’s been quite some time since I last wrote. I was simply overwhelmed by everything that’s been going on, and now that I feel like I am undergoing a severe case of burnout syndrome, I need to find room – that I obviously do not have – to vent out, otherwise I may go nuts in no time.
Events that marked 2021
#1: Java development course
In October 2020, a friend emailed me a link where I could apply for a basic full stack Java development course aimed at the employed. I applied literally half an hour before the applications closed. I passed the first test, even though I approached it very naively. It was supposed to last for two hours – I did it in 45 minutes, rushing through the last 20 questions because I didn’t want to be late for my karate lesson. Two months later, after having chosen the school and, with it, a programming language to learn, there was a new test, for the chosen school to see if I fit in. I did – and that is how my first official programming course began.
We started our lessons on 4 January 2021, ending them on 12 October, followed by three weeks allotted to finish our final project. Two 3-hour lessons every Tuesday and Friday for 10 months, with no breaks, with no days off (other than the official state and religious holidays, which there were not many), resulted in over 300 hours of both theoretical and practical knowledge we gained in Java, Spring framework / Spring Boot, Maven, Hibernate, UML, MySQL; HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Git, GitHub. Additionally, it became evident that with being employed full-time, and with family and life that’s not on hold, we would need extra time to practice or simply discuss the assignments, so we set up an additional lesson on Sundays, adding at least two more hours to the busy weekly schedule. You think that was the end?! Oh, how silly! When there was homework, or projects to work on, or group assignments, we would set up new appointments along the way, almost every week.
Added up, in total, a lot of time went to this course. I do admit not having achieved the top results in the final sum assessment; however, at the same time, I am aware I learnt a lot and am quite happy with my progress, given I started from scratch. Additionally, programming is a completely new area to me, something I have never had any touch with, and is diametrically different from my previous education and professional career. That is why I am extremely proud to have attended and completed this course, regardless of the numerical results obtained.
#2: Driving fuss
Towards the end of 2020, just days before my birthday, I was given a car. Yes, keys in my hand: hey, go have a ride. Four days later I signed the papers to be given official ownership of the car; and approximately a month and a half later the car was fully and fully MINE.
It’s been over a year, and many things happened along the way, but I have still not gotten used to the idea of driving.
So, the background: I had my driving lessons in my mid-20’s, because my sister wanted to get a licence. I was never into it, and when asked whether I wanted the lessons I straightforwardly said I didn’t. My mom turned a deaf ear to it and made me take the lessons and obtain the license anyway. I had never driven before that, nor ever after. Nobody was insane enough to give me a real car to drive for whatever reason.
But there I was, almost 7 years after my driving exam, all of a sudden owning a car. I gave it a try – if something had been off, I would have taken additional lessons to revise the theory and practice before actually participating in real traffic. It was December, the rain and snow and ice became common, and the car was there so I had to use it. Go see friends – give the car to one of them to park it properly. Go see friends again – oh, there was snow while we were inside. Take mom here or there. And that is how it all started… I was told this: the car is stable, so don’t worry when driving on the snow, which gave me 1000% boost in novice driving self-confidence, along with my observation that if everybody else was able to drive, so could I. I had the license, I knew the principles of how a car worked, so what could go wrong?
The first time I damaged the car I was a complete mess! I think I even had a small-scale nervous break down, because it was all the result of my poor judgement, which, again, is the result of me not having the slightest idea of how much space do I take up with a car. I parked in a new place, and another car parked nearby while I was gone, so while trying to get out of the place I scratched that new car, bumping my left rear door, moving so slowly I heard literally nothing, and I also ripped a cable off of another car, the one that was parked next to me. This was such a huge shock to me – I am not sure I got over it just yet; but that is how I learnt to STOP when unsure what to do. Better to just stand there, do nothing and calm down, than to rush and cause some more serious damage.
I still do not drive that much, but my self-confidence is on the rise with every new ride. So far I drove only about 8000 km in about 14 months, which is not so much. Almost my every ride is about 80 km, because I still walk or cycle in the city. But I regularly have to take the complicated parking procedures, which is a good thing.
One thing that made this whole experience enormously good and funny is a friend whom I almost lost touch over the years, but rekindled friendship with when we started sharing our driving mishaps and milestones. Everything that happened to me had happened to her a few days earlier, or vice versa, so we forged a way to relieve one another of the driving stress by sharing our novice experiences and dilemmas. She even has a way of making me laugh to myself in the worst of days, which I am so grateful for – I hope she knows how precious this is to me.
I am getting better at driving day by day, and I am proud of myself for it.
#3: First medals in karate
When I first started karate as a kid, I was never the competitive type, never interested in competitions nor medals, so it resulted in me obtaining the black belt in 2020 with no medal under my belt *pun unintended. However, 2021 brought a change in that field as well.
It was actually our sensei who suggested us to consider competing in the national championship in the disciplines of traditional karate, and when they say so all you have to do is obey, train even harder and do your best.
Two girls and I practiced for a kata team, focusing on Jion and Bassai Dai, even using our dojo on the weekends, outside of our regular training sessions. As clueless as we were at the time, we decided on the Jion kata because neither of us was into jumps, not knowing it requires a lot more strenuous exercise, but realising only days before the competition that we do so much better with Bassai Dai, where we were perfectly synced from the start.
I thought I was the weakest link in this kata team, warning my team mates from the start not to expect any particularly good performance on my side and to be aware we could just as well be defeated. However, this turned out to be wrong, as in the end we won gold medal in the kata team category for younger seniors, as well as gold medal as a kumite team, and, to my biggest surprise, I won silver for individual kata performance. While Vladimir Jorga was awarding us the medals, he suggested us to start preparing for the European championship, which was so AMAZING!
Maybe I am not as bad as I have always thought!
#4: A new bike
Ever since I got my first bike at 14, I knew I liked cycling. I always enjoyed embellishing my bike with useful equipment, such as bike computers, dynamo lights, reflective addons, spongy hand grips, stickers to promote my bike organisations, tools pouch, seat covers, etc.
The reason why I had never bought a quality bike before is I never had an idea what a quality bike is, how to decide on which size would fit me, which bike type to go for, or where to find one. But 2021 changed the circumstances for this as well, and that is how I bought my first good bike! In 2019 and 2020 I had two good bikes at my disposal. The owner of one was in the US, so he brought his Merida trekking bike from Slovenia for me to use and keep while he was away; and the other was a good Nakamura which was also temporarily mine to use. I used the aforementioned Merida for an extraordinary feat in April 2020 – to bike almost 90 km and climb a 600 m mountain to go home prior to the 84-hours covid lockdown, so that was how I realised what I wanted from a bike and what suits me.
The two main models to take into consideration when making the final decision were the following: a city bike suitable to carry a lot of luggage around town, which I was used to from my teenage days, or a sports bike, with not even bumpers, but on the other hand with lots of cool features I have always wanted, the most important of which was light weight together with agility to fit an escalator or even be carried in my hands. The other won only slightly because I could not find a Dutch bike to combine all my wishes into one bike, and Batavus Mamba lost the race mostly because of its weight.
Finally, in July 2021, I made the decision, found the bike, and after it hadn’t been sold in about 2 weeks, I went for it. It is a second-hand German Scott Aspect 930 model from 2019 in black and orange. I couldn’t be happier about it! The funny thing is my mom still doesn’t know about it, but she will have to hear about it sooner or later!
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#5: International car drive
#6: Seaside after 24 years
#7: New love failures
#8: A published dictionary
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#9: Becoming comfortable with online schooling
#10: A new school – a new disappointment
#11: James Bond
#12: Creative planning
Online Stress Relief 
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