Tales of a thousand tells

Unlike last year, I have a lot to be thankful for and a lot to say, but I'm not sure I'm up to putting it all into words. The year has had its own bouts of ups and downs, and I’m most grateful because they all gave me lessons to learn and happy moments. This year is all about gratitude for me.

The year 2022 started with me being a startup founder. If you had come across my previous year in review, it was quite a rough ride and it did stretch me and force me to outgrow my old self in a space of two months in the new year. A few weeks before raising funds, I felt I wasn’t yet ready to be a full-time founder as I’m still in school and my parents weren’t in support of me dropping out to give the startup the full attention it deserved, so I had to pull out of the program.

After having to put my startup journey on hold, the supreme pontiff of the Nigerian federal universities (ASUU) decided that we all needed a break (they had their beef with the federal government, and when elephants fight, the grasses suffer for it). The eight-month break was a silent moment for me. It was during this period that I was able to level up my technical skills in machine learning and DevOps (firefighting). It was during this period that I changed my laptop and my phone, was able to contribute to open source, landed a job in tech, saw several sides of many Nigerian startups sha, made new friends, attended tech events, traveled outside the country for the first time without my parents, invested in setting up my workspace, didn’t give a talk at a tech event, but participated in an activity that required me to speak before a large audience. Overall, in terms of positive things, I smashed all my goals for this year.

My international trip this year was unexpected; earlier this year, I filled out a form to attend an artificial intelligence conference (Deep Learning Indaba), and I had long forgotten about it until around the end of June when I received an email informing me that I had been selected to attend the conference; I had one of the best times of my life there; met people doing amazing things, including Johan, Amel, Abigail, Sara Hooker, Jade Abbott, Daisy, Delilah, Emeka, Abraham, Khaulat, Mary, Lameck, Jimoh, Ines, Engr. Tony, and many other amazing people I met at the conference.

I was also able to spend a few months in the northern part of Nigeria, specifically in Jos. During my six-month stay in Jos, I met amazing people like Jerry, Debby, Tomiwa, Anas, Shinfu, Lois, Gold (now Mrs.), Mrs. Esther, Mr. Ojeabisi, Miss Gimbiya, Shekinah (shegz), Moses, Meniks, Jennifer, Precious, Seyi (Raine), and Sunshine.

It was one of my memorable experiences in a new place, I made friends faster than I had ever done throughout my life, and they made every moment of my stay in Jos memorable. We all moved as one. I recalled a time when two of the guys amidst us got heartbroken at the same time, and we had to console them and hold a mini get-together. It was the first time I had rabbit meat.

The second hangout was an impromptu one that happened on a spree to ensure that everyone had time to relax after a busy week.

They made every moment feel like home and memorable for me.

Amazing people I met and those who impacted my life positively

From Steven Kolawole, Busayor, Dinma, Cousin Tola, Prof. Okome, Mrs. Kuteyi, Ghost_XD, Dayo, Folu, Abigail, Engr. Tony, Malik, Lanre, Queen, Testimony, Sara Hooker, Peculiar, and lots of amazing people I met this year that added value to my life in many ways.

Taking time to appreciate everyone here would make this review too long and boring, and I also don’t like boring things.

Achievements this year:

From the milestones I set last year, I achieved all but one, which was a result of my startup being on hold.

• I became an ML engineer building E2E projects now focused on Language translation research for low-resource languages.
• I contributed to open source and participated in hacktoberfest and completed the tasks.
• I got a job as a software engineer.
• Attended lots of tech events including an international one and met lots of amazing people.
• I participated in a pitch session that required me to present before a large audience, so that counts as speaking at an event.
• I changed my laptop and started setting up my mobile workspace.
• Had lots of fun and worked on putting myself first and taking appropriate rest.

Milestones for the new year.

Yay! I had a 100% completion rate if we remove the fact that I put my startup on hold, so this coming new year is for me to set bigger goals and aim higher.

• Speak at 2 international conferences.
• 10x my skills as a software engineer.
• Landing a high-paying job that's 10x my current one.
• Transferring to a software engineering degree program.
• Investing in my remote and mobile workspace.
• Going for 3 vacation trips.
• Creating unique experiences for myself(Travel, painting, drawing).
• Contributing to open-source research projects better.
• Publishing my first research paper.
• Landing a DevOps and ML engineering internship that transitions to a full-time role.
• Getting a study scholarship.
• Improving my journaling and blogging experience
• Get better at managing my finances.

This new year for me is all about accelerated but steady growth, outdoing myself, and seeing what I can achieve while being more careful about my health and myself in general.