YEAR 2018
Highlights of the year
Leon
Well it's too big to mention it here without dedicating the entire post for it, but I cannot talk about all the other things, emotions, events or memories of this year without keeping it in mind. We've got a son and it dramatically changed all our daily routine. You can read it in books or watch in some movie.. but you cannot feel it completely until it happens to you. Lots of new concerns, limitations and restrictions, new feelings and emotions and the life which never be like it was 1-2-5 years ago. Sometimes it's really tiring, sometimes rewarding. You have to sacrifice a significant part of your life get something in return and a hope that you will get much more in future (without paying a big price for that). Sometimes I treat it as a challenge and hope it makes me stronger, sometimes - as an investment hoping for some more emotional income in future, sometimes just hope that the further the easier (silly me). Egoistic? Yep, it is.
Moms
Both our moms (mine and Iana's) have visited us to see the grandson. For both of them to get to Moscow is a bigger journey than to fly from Moscow to Amsterdam. Both of them were incredibly happy to spend time here and we also appreciated their help. We wish they lived closer to us ;-)
Child base socialisation
I've got first acquaintances as Leon's father. Child-related topic is entirely new for me. It turned out that several months of parenting experience and several books we've read recently with Iana on the topic can give a solid ground for a number of talks with people who share the same problems and challenges. So I've not only got a new social role, but also a new set of related topics to talk about and some new people to communicate with (not as much as Iana.. but still ;-))
Delivery
Well.. Leon's delivery and the next 10 days is one of the strongest memories of this year, not the pleasant ones though. I already feel how the memory erases all the pain and fear.
My female friend Dara was the part of the process. She not only visited us as a friend at that tough period, but also did a whole lot of good stuff for us as doula. She helped us and shared this negative experience with us.
9 months later we met pregnant Dara in Germany when she was vacationing with her husband. Accidentally she got into child delivery (more than 1 month before a due date). There was our turn to participate not in the actual delivery, but in the unpleasant situation caused by it (when you deliver not when and were you supposed to it's not what you dream about). So that time we were the ones who tried to help her as much as possible and shared this experience.
Books
This year hadn't brought me much of book-reading. Recent couple of years I keep on complaining about amount of books I read (like there is something I can blame other than my own conscious decisions). Now it's almost impossible to believe that I used to read more than 10 (20 - 30 - 40) books per year in my high school and university years.
I think "Microserfs" by Douglas Coupland - the first book of the year - is THE book of the year. I'm still proud of every book I finish in English, and that was another one. It's not only an interesting one, close to me mood-wise and topic-wise, but it also reminded me about the old times. I read this book the first time in my previous life, when I was an idle and relaxed student without a job and a family, suffering from too much free time which I didn't know how to spend. Some music, movies or books would glued so tightly to some emotions or events that they became triggers for all that stuff to pour out of my mind whenever the trigger is exigently touched.
Movies
There were several pictures I really want to mention: Sausage party, Three Billboards..., White men can't jump, Eddie the Eagle, Аритмия (rus), Лето (rus). But as THE movies of the year (cannot pick just one) I name two Russian comedies: Я худею (rus) and Гуляй, Вася (rus). Great movies with lively characters, tasteful jokes and good dialogs.
Discovery of the year: On-line shopping
Of course I bought stuff on-line before. In The Netherlands it's much more natural as they have less supermarkets and shopping malls. Sometimes I even don't know where to go physically to buy some thing, but I do know the web address to visit.
I would say that now we make about 90% of all the purchases (excluding food and homeware trivia) on-line. Electronics, furniture, homeware, clothes.. Clothes is a separate topic, because that's a real discovery for me. I haven't done any online shopping for clothes before - I thought it's too much of a hustle: wrong sizes, returns. But this year it turned out to be quite an easy and time saving thing. Big clothes-aggregators are modern shopping malls where you can easily return all that you didn't like.
Purchase of the year
The logical continuation of the previous point ;-). There is a purchase which was technically done the previous year but I got the device on the beginning of March (it took 3 months for it to happen). I'm talking about an iPad. It wasn't the most pricy thing I've bought, wasn't it the most necessary one either (new sofa or the cell phone would surpass an iPad at that), but it was something new for me - the thing which created some new use cases, broadened some horizons for me a bit. I cannot say I use it every day... not even every week. I bought it mostly for reading books - the ones I cannot read from the small screen of the phone or e-reader, or I don't want to read from the laptop which is a very cumbersome book-reading device. I'm totally satisfied with this function of the device. Of course from time to time I use it to just read some technical articles, or brows the internet, or watch youtube (even though it's getting more and more difficult to do it without an adblock).. but reading is #1 use case of the device (said the guy who read just half a dozen of books this year).
Trips
In spite of the fact that the entire year was busier than the previous ones, I've got to have 3 trips out of the Netherlands. Two of them was sponsored by my employer.. so the number is a bit cheating ;-)
This year I finally got to London - it was work related trip which lasted just couple of days, but I had enough emotions and memories out of it: huge and densely built and populated city, big planning session for what would constitute the biggest part of out work year, meeting with friends, and walking around the city center.
Then there was a week in the Bay Area and WWDC which brought me lots of different emotions and proved the idea that it's a great place to work, communicate and attend events but seems to be not the best one to live.
In September we went to Valencia, Spain with Iana and Leon. And it was remarkable not only because of Calatrava's City of Arts and Sciences or laying on a beach, but mostly because it was our first trip with Leon. It was exciting and scary at the same time. Eventually it was not bad, just don't call it "vacation" or "relaxation". It was nothing more than the change of the scenery with more or less the same activity (related to caring for a small but very energetic baby).
Job search
This topic came from the previous year. In my 2017 post I mentioned it as something that I started to do and I hoped I would accomplish it in year 2018... but I haven't. I had dozens of phone/skype interviews and test assignments, several on-sites and even one accepted job offer. But the fact is I'm still at Qardio - not a bad place to work, but something that I wish to pass by and leave in the past. And as time goes it seems more and more difficult to find something I really want. So if I don't succeed any time soon there are several options for me to move forward:
- To rethink my attitude to the current job and try (yet another time) to solve all the disagreements that I have there.
- To loosen my criteria of a new job (there are enough of filtered out options)
- To widen the geographical area of my search and be ready to move somewhere out of the Netherlands.
... a tough choice.
Football
This year there was more football in my life than usually, even more than in the previous World Cup years. There was usual Champion League play-offs in the first half of the year, but together with watching some key-matches at home we were gathering with some colleagues (and ex-colleagues) in pubs and sport bars watching them all together. Also there was a World Cup in my beloved motherland Russia where our national team bet Spain and made it to quater-final (without showing a great game... but still). The entire Cup was an interesting one and even the final game was spectacular. At work we organised a bet (totalisator) with 10 participants and jack-pot of more than 100 euro. I lost.. but it was a lot of fun. Together with that I played football myself with my teammates several times this year. It brought me enough of joy but also exhaustion and understanding how far I am from a proper physical shape.
Self improvement
This year the plan was to do a more extensive development, meaning to start improving my skills in some new directions. I started to write to my own technical blog and made a presentation at the local iOS meet-up (Core Data at CocoaHeadsNL). Although there were just one presentation and 5 articles, I consider it to be a good start. Unfortunately due to very limited spare time I had to sacrifice something for that (not only for that). I completely stopped learning English (talking, reading, watching movies were of course there, but nothing more) and I didn't brush up (read: completely forgot) all the computer science algorithms which I drilled last year. Needless to say that my Dutch is still borderline zero, which also something I have to learn asap. So let's say it could be better but I think I did some minimum to say that I keep on improving (hoping that I got more than I lost.. it's always impossible to properly calculate this balance).
The age
I turned 30 this year. Birthday as an idea is a symbolically picked day to measure your age (yet another year you've managed to stay alive... congratulations!). Sometimes we pick some specific birthdays, call them "anniversaries" and pay even more attention to them. We suppose to move from one period of our life to another, make some conclusions and do some planning for future.. even though it's just yet another regular day of your life.
I clearly remember the birthday party when I celebrated my 10th birthday. I remember feeling that it's a big date and I was moving to some less "childish" stage, that I had to be more responsible for my actions from that day on (what else you have to do when there are 2 digits in your age).
I have no memories about my 20th BD at all.
This year it wasn't about the birthday - I barely celebrated anything - but there were some thoughts on the course of the year about me being 30 now (or getting to be 30 that year). I was jokingly asking my friends who already turned this age if there was a life after 30. I had several other jokes on the topic. And you remember that in every joke there is just a part of a joke, right ;-). So this number 30 means something for me.
I would say there are some changes in my life which make me feel that the youth is over: increased amount of responsibility, decreased amount of free time, worse health, different wishes, goals and priorities, different kind of relationship with my friends and parents.. becoming a parent myself. It's a process, a transformation that has been constantly going with me for recent couple of years, but 30th BD is kind of an anchor point for all of that in my mind, a milestone, a tag. All these different changes and ideas are connected with starting a 4th decade of my life.
What's in 2019?
I think the next year suppose to be the last one when we can decide to move further from Amsterdam. If we don't do it we have nothing left other than to consider that we are here for a significant period of time. We should start working on the language and the mortgage - things you don't care about until you decide to settle down. Now it all hung up in the air. The uncertainty gives you some flexibility to easily change your life (switch a job, move to another country), but on another hand it's sometimes really inconvenient - not to have a solid ground under your feet. Basically all this depends on my job and the level of satisfaction it gives me. I hope next year I'll sort it out (at least for some time).
Of course I'd like to have more free time, more rest and self improvements, read more books, participate in conferences, start learning Dutch and keep on improving my English, travel more, sleep more and spend more time with my friends and family.. but I still remember that there are just 24 hours in a day. But I'll keep on doing my best to do as much as possible.
What I also expect next year: both our moms to visit us again; us to go for Florence's concert in Rotterdam, to St.Petersburg for two weeks in summer, to my father's village in Hungary and somewhere else just for vacation; Leon to start walking and talking... this world to keep on spinning ;-)
Leon
Well it's too big to mention it here without dedicating the entire post for it, but I cannot talk about all the other things, emotions, events or memories of this year without keeping it in mind. We've got a son and it dramatically changed all our daily routine. You can read it in books or watch in some movie.. but you cannot feel it completely until it happens to you. Lots of new concerns, limitations and restrictions, new feelings and emotions and the life which never be like it was 1-2-5 years ago. Sometimes it's really tiring, sometimes rewarding. You have to sacrifice a significant part of your life get something in return and a hope that you will get much more in future (without paying a big price for that). Sometimes I treat it as a challenge and hope it makes me stronger, sometimes - as an investment hoping for some more emotional income in future, sometimes just hope that the further the easier (silly me). Egoistic? Yep, it is.
Moms
Both our moms (mine and Iana's) have visited us to see the grandson. For both of them to get to Moscow is a bigger journey than to fly from Moscow to Amsterdam. Both of them were incredibly happy to spend time here and we also appreciated their help. We wish they lived closer to us ;-)
Child base socialisation
I've got first acquaintances as Leon's father. Child-related topic is entirely new for me. It turned out that several months of parenting experience and several books we've read recently with Iana on the topic can give a solid ground for a number of talks with people who share the same problems and challenges. So I've not only got a new social role, but also a new set of related topics to talk about and some new people to communicate with (not as much as Iana.. but still ;-))
Delivery
Well.. Leon's delivery and the next 10 days is one of the strongest memories of this year, not the pleasant ones though. I already feel how the memory erases all the pain and fear.
My female friend Dara was the part of the process. She not only visited us as a friend at that tough period, but also did a whole lot of good stuff for us as doula. She helped us and shared this negative experience with us.
9 months later we met pregnant Dara in Germany when she was vacationing with her husband. Accidentally she got into child delivery (more than 1 month before a due date). There was our turn to participate not in the actual delivery, but in the unpleasant situation caused by it (when you deliver not when and were you supposed to it's not what you dream about). So that time we were the ones who tried to help her as much as possible and shared this experience.
Books
This year hadn't brought me much of book-reading. Recent couple of years I keep on complaining about amount of books I read (like there is something I can blame other than my own conscious decisions). Now it's almost impossible to believe that I used to read more than 10 (20 - 30 - 40) books per year in my high school and university years.
I think "Microserfs" by Douglas Coupland - the first book of the year - is THE book of the year. I'm still proud of every book I finish in English, and that was another one. It's not only an interesting one, close to me mood-wise and topic-wise, but it also reminded me about the old times. I read this book the first time in my previous life, when I was an idle and relaxed student without a job and a family, suffering from too much free time which I didn't know how to spend. Some music, movies or books would glued so tightly to some emotions or events that they became triggers for all that stuff to pour out of my mind whenever the trigger is exigently touched.
Movies
There were several pictures I really want to mention: Sausage party, Three Billboards..., White men can't jump, Eddie the Eagle, Аритмия (rus), Лето (rus). But as THE movies of the year (cannot pick just one) I name two Russian comedies: Я худею (rus) and Гуляй, Вася (rus). Great movies with lively characters, tasteful jokes and good dialogs.
Discovery of the year: On-line shopping
Of course I bought stuff on-line before. In The Netherlands it's much more natural as they have less supermarkets and shopping malls. Sometimes I even don't know where to go physically to buy some thing, but I do know the web address to visit.
I would say that now we make about 90% of all the purchases (excluding food and homeware trivia) on-line. Electronics, furniture, homeware, clothes.. Clothes is a separate topic, because that's a real discovery for me. I haven't done any online shopping for clothes before - I thought it's too much of a hustle: wrong sizes, returns. But this year it turned out to be quite an easy and time saving thing. Big clothes-aggregators are modern shopping malls where you can easily return all that you didn't like.
Purchase of the year
The logical continuation of the previous point ;-). There is a purchase which was technically done the previous year but I got the device on the beginning of March (it took 3 months for it to happen). I'm talking about an iPad. It wasn't the most pricy thing I've bought, wasn't it the most necessary one either (new sofa or the cell phone would surpass an iPad at that), but it was something new for me - the thing which created some new use cases, broadened some horizons for me a bit. I cannot say I use it every day... not even every week. I bought it mostly for reading books - the ones I cannot read from the small screen of the phone or e-reader, or I don't want to read from the laptop which is a very cumbersome book-reading device. I'm totally satisfied with this function of the device. Of course from time to time I use it to just read some technical articles, or brows the internet, or watch youtube (even though it's getting more and more difficult to do it without an adblock).. but reading is #1 use case of the device (said the guy who read just half a dozen of books this year).
Trips
In spite of the fact that the entire year was busier than the previous ones, I've got to have 3 trips out of the Netherlands. Two of them was sponsored by my employer.. so the number is a bit cheating ;-)
This year I finally got to London - it was work related trip which lasted just couple of days, but I had enough emotions and memories out of it: huge and densely built and populated city, big planning session for what would constitute the biggest part of out work year, meeting with friends, and walking around the city center.
Then there was a week in the Bay Area and WWDC which brought me lots of different emotions and proved the idea that it's a great place to work, communicate and attend events but seems to be not the best one to live.
In September we went to Valencia, Spain with Iana and Leon. And it was remarkable not only because of Calatrava's City of Arts and Sciences or laying on a beach, but mostly because it was our first trip with Leon. It was exciting and scary at the same time. Eventually it was not bad, just don't call it "vacation" or "relaxation". It was nothing more than the change of the scenery with more or less the same activity (related to caring for a small but very energetic baby).
Job search
This topic came from the previous year. In my 2017 post I mentioned it as something that I started to do and I hoped I would accomplish it in year 2018... but I haven't. I had dozens of phone/skype interviews and test assignments, several on-sites and even one accepted job offer. But the fact is I'm still at Qardio - not a bad place to work, but something that I wish to pass by and leave in the past. And as time goes it seems more and more difficult to find something I really want. So if I don't succeed any time soon there are several options for me to move forward:
- To rethink my attitude to the current job and try (yet another time) to solve all the disagreements that I have there.
- To loosen my criteria of a new job (there are enough of filtered out options)
- To widen the geographical area of my search and be ready to move somewhere out of the Netherlands.
... a tough choice.
Football
This year there was more football in my life than usually, even more than in the previous World Cup years. There was usual Champion League play-offs in the first half of the year, but together with watching some key-matches at home we were gathering with some colleagues (and ex-colleagues) in pubs and sport bars watching them all together. Also there was a World Cup in my beloved motherland Russia where our national team bet Spain and made it to quater-final (without showing a great game... but still). The entire Cup was an interesting one and even the final game was spectacular. At work we organised a bet (totalisator) with 10 participants and jack-pot of more than 100 euro. I lost.. but it was a lot of fun. Together with that I played football myself with my teammates several times this year. It brought me enough of joy but also exhaustion and understanding how far I am from a proper physical shape.
Self improvement
This year the plan was to do a more extensive development, meaning to start improving my skills in some new directions. I started to write to my own technical blog and made a presentation at the local iOS meet-up (Core Data at CocoaHeadsNL). Although there were just one presentation and 5 articles, I consider it to be a good start. Unfortunately due to very limited spare time I had to sacrifice something for that (not only for that). I completely stopped learning English (talking, reading, watching movies were of course there, but nothing more) and I didn't brush up (read: completely forgot) all the computer science algorithms which I drilled last year. Needless to say that my Dutch is still borderline zero, which also something I have to learn asap. So let's say it could be better but I think I did some minimum to say that I keep on improving (hoping that I got more than I lost.. it's always impossible to properly calculate this balance).
The age
I turned 30 this year. Birthday as an idea is a symbolically picked day to measure your age (yet another year you've managed to stay alive... congratulations!). Sometimes we pick some specific birthdays, call them "anniversaries" and pay even more attention to them. We suppose to move from one period of our life to another, make some conclusions and do some planning for future.. even though it's just yet another regular day of your life.
I clearly remember the birthday party when I celebrated my 10th birthday. I remember feeling that it's a big date and I was moving to some less "childish" stage, that I had to be more responsible for my actions from that day on (what else you have to do when there are 2 digits in your age).
I have no memories about my 20th BD at all.
This year it wasn't about the birthday - I barely celebrated anything - but there were some thoughts on the course of the year about me being 30 now (or getting to be 30 that year). I was jokingly asking my friends who already turned this age if there was a life after 30. I had several other jokes on the topic. And you remember that in every joke there is just a part of a joke, right ;-). So this number 30 means something for me.
I would say there are some changes in my life which make me feel that the youth is over: increased amount of responsibility, decreased amount of free time, worse health, different wishes, goals and priorities, different kind of relationship with my friends and parents.. becoming a parent myself. It's a process, a transformation that has been constantly going with me for recent couple of years, but 30th BD is kind of an anchor point for all of that in my mind, a milestone, a tag. All these different changes and ideas are connected with starting a 4th decade of my life.
What's in 2019?
I think the next year suppose to be the last one when we can decide to move further from Amsterdam. If we don't do it we have nothing left other than to consider that we are here for a significant period of time. We should start working on the language and the mortgage - things you don't care about until you decide to settle down. Now it all hung up in the air. The uncertainty gives you some flexibility to easily change your life (switch a job, move to another country), but on another hand it's sometimes really inconvenient - not to have a solid ground under your feet. Basically all this depends on my job and the level of satisfaction it gives me. I hope next year I'll sort it out (at least for some time).
Of course I'd like to have more free time, more rest and self improvements, read more books, participate in conferences, start learning Dutch and keep on improving my English, travel more, sleep more and spend more time with my friends and family.. but I still remember that there are just 24 hours in a day. But I'll keep on doing my best to do as much as possible.
What I also expect next year: both our moms to visit us again; us to go for Florence's concert in Rotterdam, to St.Petersburg for two weeks in summer, to my father's village in Hungary and somewhere else just for vacation; Leon to start walking and talking... this world to keep on spinning ;-)
Какой классный пост у тебя вышел, на одном дыхании прочитала.
ReplyDeleteСтолько всего нужного за год, а какая работа, которая не видна - блог, выступления. Ты крут, чувак! Желаю тебе достигнуть всего, что ты пожелал, в следующем году!
Обнимаю и огромное спасибо за то, что ты рядом!