2016 year in review

What changed 2016 for me was that “realisation” of being an adult. It wasn’t about age. (I turned 30 in June). It was lots of responsibilities staring me in the face and that subconscious echo it was time to make some decisions; no more pushing them away.

1. I made that decision of settling in Lagos. You can’t make any serious life plan when you are even confused about where to settle. Our rent was to expire around the third quarter and home boy was getting married. I had to get a place to myself.
   Getting a place wasn’t easy. I wanted a quiet environment, a well designed house (floors, lighting, finishing) and lots of space. (I love beautiful things. This is my biggest weakness). Because I was already living on the Island and used to the environs already, I narrowed my search to the Island. I wasn’t bullish about the Island though. People say I could get a place of same quality but cheaper on the Mainland and I actually did some search. But when I compared prices to the Island, the difference wasn’t much. In fact, in some cases, the Mainland alternative were more expensive.
   After about 3 months of search and over 20 house checks, I finally found a place I liked. (My agent was a really patient lady).
   I think a lot can still be done in the online real estate market. We can start with top quality pictures, videos and more detailed reviews. But that’s a story for another day.
2. I didn’t do any traveling outside the country this year. This was a hard one for me. There is this soothing distraction traveling brings and I knew that would mess me up. Plus, of course, I didn’t have that extra cash to blow on traveling. Every money I earned had a purpose waiting for it. (And hey, did you hear about the fall of the Naira?)
3. I got married. That wasn’t as easy as is. If I had thought about it too much, I would have deferred it. To make the commitment, I proposed to my long time girlfriend in February. We had “Introduction” July and picked a date for December. The preceding months to the date were trying. I didn’t envisage a lot goes into weddings. There was so much to prepare for, plan and buy. I had to continually convince myself it will work out. And it did. (A big thanks to everyone that contributed in cash, kind and wishes; and apologies to people that expected an invite but didn’t get one)
4. I couldn’t blog as much as I would have loved to. Doing technical write-ups take time, sometimes days, and I couldn’t keep up. But it wasn’t only blogging I didn’t have time for. I had to cut down on a lot of things I spend time on. Outside thefeed.press, I didn’t even keep any personal project. Some people asked why I haven’t been “shipping” experiments. In truth, I experimented on some ideas (Slack bots, Fb bots, serverless architecture, content extraction, microservices, etc). I just didn’t talk about them or keep them. I didn’t want to dwell too much on them. I disposed¹ them as they came.
5. In a way, I got lucky. Yes, I worked harder or pushed more but looking back at some of the things that happened; some of the opportunities that came my way, it was pure luck. I didn’t even know how much money I earned and spent till I did an all year statement analysis through Cruncher

In summary, 2016 has been a great year for me. 2017 will be more relaxed though. More focus will be on work. We are already working on new things and I can’t wait to get them out.

Cheers to an awesome year and great hopes for the coming one!

PS: Here is last year’s review: 2015