Twenty Twenty: Growth, Vibes, & Omo!!

6 min readDec 31, 2020

Last year, my year-in-review takeaway was that it’s okay to fail, and failures play a huge role in the successes we’re yet to achieve. Well, I still think the same, but for a whole lot of this year, I reflected back on that statement and had a rethink.

I thought I had failed at a lot of things, little did I know that 2020 had more failures in store for me lol. For some reason, I didn’t feel like writing a review this year, but these reviews and articles I write about myself are a good way to reflect back on the past. They help me document my growth process, so yeah, I would just do it anyway and as well try not to write this lazily.

Well, a lot did happen this year. Asides from the setbacks, I became a better person, had massive growths career-wise, etc

I’ll split this into sections and write about my wins and failures in each section. I’ll keep it short and precise, so I don’t bore anyone with my boring stories lol.

Community

I’m community pragmatist at heart, so it sort of makes sense to start with my community engagement this year.

My last year strictly evolved around building communities and helping people. This year, I made a goal to do more for the community, get more people started in tech and make more impact overall.

Well, I was only able to do a lot in the first quarter of the year before the pandemic hit! Here are the most relevant ones;

I organized a web & android workshop that got quite a number of people started in these fields. I’m excited to see that some people who started off in that workshop are now developers and have grown considerably.
Taught and helped organized a few workshops at AI Saturdays, Abeokuta. before we put physical meetups to a halt(PS: Khaulat is simply amazing).
Attended the biggest Open Source Conference in Africa (I love Open Source!!).

No more physical events meant I could not do so much in most of the communities I was active in, Abeokuta people don’t just like virtual events! Phew!!! However, I continued to mentor and help as many people as I could, here’s a few notable post-covid-19 community things that happened.

I graduated as a DSC lead, yaaayyyy!! You can read about my experience as a lead in my article — — 12 Months of Awesomeness: Lemons or Broccolis?
Got invited to Google IO, Covid-19 screwed up.
Co-organized a 3-month JavaScript intensive internship at JavaScript Minna. The growth rate of interns is something that specifically brings joy to my heart. Kudos to Abdulqudus Abubakre and the rest of the team.

Career

Well, I’d say I’ve grown massively this year. I might not have learned as much as I want to, or be exactly where I thought I’d be but I’m excited to see how much I was able to achieve.

Failures & Rejections

Hot tears, hot ones mehn! I got thrice the number of rejections I got last year, this was because I applied more and was keen on getting a job. The three most painful were;

I got rejected by Creative Commons for an Open Source Community Management role after making it past 4 Interview stages — I really really wanted this role because it involved two things I’m strongly passionate about; Community Building & Open Source.
I got rejected for Google Summer of Code the second time by Wikimedia Foundation — Spent several sleepless nights and weeks preparing and catching up but it still ended in tears.
I got fired as a technical writer at geekflare earlier this year, omo! It was so sad!

There were tons of SE rejections!! But Omo!! We mueeveedd 🚀

Wins

I didn’t get to freelance a lot this year like I did last year, that was sort of intentional. I wanted an actual Job or an Internship at the very least, I wanted to get a feel of working at a company. Well, I did take on a few roles and an Internship.

I was unemployed for a long time after losing my Job at geekflare, I was super broke (thank God for savings lol).

Sometimes around mid this year, I got a contract role as a Backend Engineer at Grazac. The contract lasted 3 months and I got to work on a really interesting project(launching soon🚀) that I learned quite a lot from.
Towards when my contract at Grazac was coming to an end, I became a Google Season of Docs Intern at Wikimedia Foundation. Over 3 months, I got to learn about writing and contributing to Open Source documentation and earned a lot of money too lol. 7figs!. — Read about my experience here.
Few weeks to the end of my internship, I got my current job. Well, not exactly, I’m yet to sign a contract/agreement which means I could get fired/laid off anytime lol. I consider it more like a freelance/contract role until we come into legal agreements. But the good thing is I earn twice as much as I used to in my previous role.
I’m currently Interviewing for my dream role at The Linux Foundation🥺, it’s an Open Source Community Management role and I made it past 2 interview phases already. Fingers crossed🤞, I’m super optimistic!!!
I and some amazing friends started building a startup — Fidia. I’m particularly excited about what we’re building, we’ll be launching the first quarter of 2021. I honestly can’t wait!!!

Family

I’ll be sharing some personal stuff here, I feel this review would be incomplete if I don’t mention them.

Despite the good things that happened, I was sad for more than half of this year. The pandemic started mildly and slowly evolved into a lockdown, the lockdown was great for me. It gave me enough time to do a lot of stuff, but at the same time got a negative toll on my parent's finances and businesses.

Few months into the lockdown, Dad's business collapsed completely, followed by Mums. They’re both old, so there’s very little they could do at their age. Things got darker as each week passes by, and at some point coupled with all that was going on around, the rejections, feeling helpless, etc. made me really close to being depressed. I just wasn’t earning enough to support the family the way I would have loved to. Thankfully, things are better now, I escaped depression.

Education

Well, not so much to say. Schooling in this country sucks! It makes dropping out seem like a really good option.

Relationship

Yes! I have an LOML.

Her name is Monife, she loves me unconditionally, she’s my laptop🥺🥺.

Words of a single to stupor bro 😭.

Well, this year, I lost love, had a situationship and got friendzoned🤣🤣.

Moni remains loyal to me. Oh sweet Moni🥺, I’ll never let you down.

Social Life & Friendship

My social life is still nothing to write home about. I’m this 100% indoor omniverted dude who rarely even steps into his own compound, and spends 80% of his time in front of a screen lol. Thanks to the pandemic, I got worse.

But one thing is that I got better at communicatinging with people and learned to appreciate relationships more. I now believe in friendship more than I used to and hope to meet a lot of amazing folks next year.

2021 — People and Memories

This year, I learned the importance of creating good relationships with people and making beautiful memories.

The death of Oke specifically made me think hard, the beautiful memories of him people shared. It made me ask myself “ If I die today, what memories would I leave people to hold on to?”.

This line from avicii’s song, The Nights, lives rent free in my head now — “One day you’ll leave this world behind, So live a life you will remember” This will be my Mantra from now on, and I’ll live by it!

So yeah, starting 2021, I want to do more for people, I want to be closer to the world than I already am, I want to make beautiful memories, travel and meet new people. I want to come out of my shell!

Goals?

I’m not sure I believe in goals as much as I used to, but still, I’ll keep doing what I love — building communities, helping people, advocating for and contributing to Open Source, writing code, learning and growing my career overall. Most importantly, spare time to connect with the world and make beautiful memories.

I was a workaholic in 2020, my work-life balance was insanely poor, I was surviving strictly on vibes and inshaallah. I hope 2021 is a better year.

Cheers to an amazing year ahead 🥂🥂.