Year of 2017 will stay in my memory for a very long time - it was most chaotic, crazy and game changing year in my life.

But let's start from the beginning

I think the first quarter of the year was the most chaotic - I've decided to look for a new job opportunity and quit my job without having new one. It took couple weeks before I've found a new one.

Work-life imbalance

Because of the cooperation with new workplace I've lacked totally from work-life balance. Despite the fact I've worked remotely it turned out that I was almost whole day at work and absent for my family. During this time I've learned a lot but it cost me also a lot of nerves. After couple months of overwork and both physical and mental fatigue we've decided to choose work separately and split up.

Freelance & future

For the most time of my career I was freelancing - no matter if it was my full-time job or just to gain experience / extra money during free time / after work for my employers (every single one of them know about that).

I've decided to take advantage of the fact that I've setup a legal company and started working for small and medium clients as a web developer, while I was searching for my next full-time workplace at the same time.

During this phase I've also started working on my extra, open-sourced projects. It was a great opportunity to polish skills in tools which I've wanted to use in my new full-time job (BTW. this website is created thanks to one of them).

After couple months, hundreds of sent CVs, motivation letters and recruitment processes I've finally found a new employer (which I'll uncover when I officially start in the second half of January).

All I can tell at this moment is that I'm super excited about it :)

Personal growth stats

During the 2017, I've made 624 open-source code contributions and gained 263 reputation points on StackOverflow (which makes me to have 2132 in total).

Besides that, I've reset all my tech-related social media accounts and got a new nickname (mrmnmly ;) ). While my new instagram followers grow pretty well (47 followers vs ~20 followers on the old one), my >new twitter account with old username< twitter goes much worse (19 followers currently vs ~225 on the old one).

In the end, I'm aware that I'm the only one responsible for such situation - I'm pretty focused on programming rather than marketing and it's no magic to me, that it will take long time till anyone get interested in my person to follow ;)

Also, none of my real-life friends doesn't know that I've switched my social media accounts to a new ones - but I think separating professional and private online presence is easier to manage.

During the year, I've managed to finish couple projects using Vue.js and React.js professionally. I'm currently working on a open-source project that uses Vue.js for UI and Express.js as a backend.

I've also learned that finding remote work is really, really hard. Like almost impossible. But I was not giving up and found one (twice!). But this is the topic for separate article (will publish it soon btw.).

In the end, I've learned tons of stuff during last year.

Darn, let's make 2018 better - waay better! :)

All the best for the New Year everyone!

-- ł.