# 2020 Year in Review *Published on December 31, 2020* Well... in last year's review I wondered what 2020 would bring. Sorry about that y'all. I did not know what I was asking for! This year for a number of reasons has been crazy, least of all with the global pandemic people will still be writing about years from now.  Let's dive right in to my thoughts on 2020. # Highlights - Did a metric ton of Therapy. - Decided to live authentically as myself. - Started taking better care of myself. Had a streak of 133 days in a row working out! - Remain employed at a fantastic job. - Built a lot of cool things for work and myself. - Released my first course: [**Learn Rails by Building Instagram**](https://store.andrewfomera.com/learn-rails-by-building-instagram) **.** It's done well for sales (for having no real audience!) - Took a shot and developed/released [AppLocale.dev](https://applocale.dev). It's not gone as well as I hoped, but more on that below 👀. # Professional Let's start with the professional side of things. I've continued working at **Podia** and I still very much enjoy like I did on my first day. My coworkers are all amazing and it's a wonderful place to work. I was able to work on some challenging, but fun projects and that was awesome. Towards the end of the summer I did notice I was starting to get burnt-out, but I was able to take time off and recharge to make it to my winter break. Next year I'll work differently to try not to get burnt-out.  In addition to trying not to get burnt out, I'm working towards continuing to learn and grow as a Software Developer. I'd like to earn a Senior position when I'm ready for it. # Personal So, this section is the hardest to write, but here goes! I did a **lot** of therapy this year. It took many sessions to work on myself and things, and I'm at a place now where I'm much happier with myself. I still am doing therapy, because it's super useful to have someone who's not biased towards you to talk to. In 2020 I decided that I was going to live authentically from now on, but that meant accepting I am a trans woman and starting my transition. I'll write more sometime about this, but all most people should care about is that 1) I'm happy as myself now. 2) I'm taking far better care of myself and can actually see a future that doesn't end soon. If you knew my as my old name, I ask you refer to me as my new name (Andrea) and no longer using my old name. It will take some time, I recognize but its important to me ❤️. Up until Christmas Eve, I had a workout streak of 133 days in a row! That's the most I've ever consistently worked out and I feel better than I did before. There's still a long way to go, but it really helps me to center myself back on me and not all the issues I have for that half-hour or hour I'm working out that day. I've lost around 10lbs, with hopefully more to come off with time. I started my workouts again on December 26th, so here's hoping in 2021 I can keep it up. OH YEAH, I DELETED FACEBOOK. That was huge for my mental health in 2020 honestly. # Side projects Aside from the course I launched in January last year (wow its been a whole year!), the other main side project was [AppLocale.dev](https://applocale.dev). Overall it's not been the smashing success one would hope for, but overall I learned a lot building it. I'll probably shut it down, or move it to a cheaper hosting solution (like Hatchbox) early in 2021. I've got a few more projects in the air, I want to work on a course with Hotwire for early 2021, along with some more beginner focused courses for Rails. But for now, that's all I want to talk about, except **Madmin** which is a new Rails admin panel Chris Oliver (from GoRails) and I are working on again. In fact, I'm typing this blog post via it!  Chris and I have been working on a free beginner course I'm super excited for folks to have starting in 2021 (when we finish that up). That's exciting because it's the kind of course I wanted when I was starting out. # Disappointments I mean, I could list my own disappointments here, but let's just give ourselves some slack and say begone with 2020.  # 2021 Initial Plans I'm not going to set much firmly here as things are always subject to change... but here's my thinking into 2021. - Continue working out and ensuring my health is a priority. - Try to blog more than once a year 😅. - Work to get Madmin out. - Ship some awesome features/bug fixes at work. - Work on some courses! - Try not to tweet too much or start any drama on Twitter. Thats all! --- By [Andrea Fomera](https://afomera.dev) | [View original post](https://afomera.dev/posts/2020-year-in-review)