2020 Review: What Did & Didn’t Work

At the end of each year I try to write an annual review post to reflect on the previous year.

This helps me to receive some closure on the events that have occurred throughout the year as well as think about what I’d like to accomplish in the coming year.

The structure of these posts is simple.

First I share photos and walk you through my life each month of the previous year.

Then, I basically take a KPT (keep, problem, try) approach in evaluating what things went well over the previous year and more importantly… what didn’t go so well.

My 2020 review post coming is a bit late because of how crazy 2020 was and because I was traveling to start this year (2021).

In any case, let’s get to the review!

Remembering 2020 Month by Month

January

If every month of 2020 was as good as January was, 2020 would have been far and away the best year I’d ever had.

The month started out with the girl I was dating throwing me an awesome surprise birthday dinner.

Later in the month I also had the chance to travel to one of my favorite cities in the world — Kuala Lumpur.

It had been nearly two years since the last time I was in KL. I still loved it as much as ever.

After nearly six years in Asia I can confirm that the motorbikes in Vietnam driving on the sidewalk and beeping at me to move over like I’m the one in the wrong still irritates me to no end.

KL doesn’t have that. Like I’ve said for years, KL is possibly the best big city in Asia (with breathable air) to live a comfortable Western lifestyle at developing world prices.

There are so many great malls in KL, the delivery food game seems pretty strong now, and man oh man the apartments in KL are HOT.

Check out this awesome rooftop pool at an apartment/hotel I stayed at in Bangsar (one of the nicer neighborhoods). 

The place also had an arcade, ping pong table, 29th floor city view from our room, a nice bathroom… everything you could ask for in a place you’d like to call home at only $20-25/night. Monthly rates would be an even better value no doubt as well.

I could go on complimenting Kuala Lumpur for the rest of this post, but my Malay adventure wasn’t limited to just KL.

In January I also went to Melaka for the first time. Melaka is a laidback town a few hours outside of KL.

I think Melaka is comparable to Vũng Tàu, Vietnam and Pattaya, Thailand. All three are coastal cities that offer a refreshing escape just a few hours outside of their respective country’s capitals.

Anyway, while in Melaka I stayed at a nice 4-star hotel and enjoyed walking around the harbor.

Of course, January wasn’t a perfect month. One of my idols Kobe Bryant died in a tragic helicopter crash.

After that, the year slowly started to unravel for everyone. I’ve even heard some people joke that Kobe was the one holding our world together, and the moment we lost him was the moment 2020 became well… 2020.

February

This month started off strong. The girl I was dating and I were just finishing our trip in Malaysia. We had just come back from Melaka and were spending a few days in KL again before coming back to Saigon.

Unfortunately, I had this genius idea to book an extremely low-budget apartment with my old landlord’s company. I paid $55 for a week to stay in what could only be described to most Westerners as a “modest” dwelling.

We’re talking holes in the sofa, and an air conditioner that started leaking water on me while I was sleeping one night.

I lost most of my data in an accident midway through this year so I can’t find pictures of this place. While it wasn’t the worst place I’ve ever stayed at, it was pretty close to the worst.

Afterwards I moved back into my old apartment with the gambling neighbors I mentioned in last year’s review post.

I also had some extra time to focus on becoming a better software developer as my English classes were canceled due to Vietnam’s caution around the COVID-19 situation.

This extra time was greatly appreciated as I needed to focus on getting the basics of TypeScript and React Native down.

I also used some of the extra time to make videos for my software development YouTube channel.

March

By this time, COVID-19 had reached the public awareness of the world at large. Yet, in Vietnam we were still able to live our lives pretty normally for the first half of the month.

During March I went on a couple nice dates: A nice Italian that offered surprisingly high quality food despite the low prices, and a frozen yogurt place one night after work.

I also gave a Tech Talk on React Native with one of my colleagues. This Tech Talk helped push management at my company to adopt React Native as one of the main technologies we use.

April 

This was a stressful month. Vietnam went into a complete month-long lockdown as the COVID-19 situation worsened.

Fortunately, my company allowed us to work from home. This allowed me to continue gaining experience and sharpening craft.

Unfortunately, being a junior developer working in a new technology isn’t easy. The tech lead of my team also got sick so we had to haphazardly replace him with another developer.

While competent technically, this other developer would often disappear for hours at a time while we worked from home. He also spoke barely any English and was “too busy” to have any patience for me to instead try to communicate in Vietnamese.

As a result, work this month was an absolute grind. I worked hard almost everyday (if not everyday) including weekends to try to become a stronger team member.

Despite that, there were still often hours and days I’d get stuck trying to debug obscure errors.

During this month, I had extremely limited real world contact with other human beings. For that reason, I decided I’d use Baselang again to try to revive my Spanish.

It was nice to have someone to talk to everyday during a time when I otherwise would have been home alone stuck in my head.

At $149/month, however, your boy didn’t have the bankroll to keep those payments flowing the rest of the year.

May 

May was basically the beginning of the end. This month I moved from my apartment in Saigon’s District 3 over to an apartment on the outskirts of District 1.

I did this to save an extra $75/month and live closer to work. Unfortunately, this ended up being a huge mistake.

The landlords at the new serviced apartment were a married couple with one child. The wife and child were pretty friendly, but the husband ended up being an alcoholic jerk.

Over the next few months he would:

1. Create new rules on the fly and then get angry at tenants for not following rules which had never been communicated to us.
2. Try to increase the rental fee without prior notice.
3. Provide unreliable or poor quality services (missed laundry days, poorly cleaned floors, etc.)

On the bright side, my English classes had resumed now that the COVID-19 situation had calmed down a bit.

June

The pain of summer 2020 started to pick up in June… literally. One night I was opening my closet to prepare my clothes for the next workday and the entire door broke and fell onto my foot. Ouch.

Of course, being 2020 physical pain wasn’t enough. The landlord at the apartment was also trying to leverage some bogus bait-and-switch tactics to increase the rent despite having previously agreed to one rate for a minimum of three months.

I was going through some ups and downs with the girl I was dating at the time as well.

Fortunately, work was serving as one solid pillar in my life. During the month of June I made a lot of progress towards earning FreeCodeCamp’s Front-End Libraries certificate.

I also saved a decent amount of money from continuing to teach English classes on the weekend.

July

By this time I realized I was starting to get pretty burnt out from working 7 days a week. I’m not sure how if I should describe my issue as my “mind playing tricks on me” or stress induced hallucinations.

In any case, basically I would walk down the street and get absolutely spooked by the dog that was chasing me — Oh wait, “It’s just a piece of trash.” 

My personal life was in shambles. Apart from having these light mental issues, the girl I was dating was also bringing a lot of drama into my life.

The landlord continued to make my home life more and more stressful too. I dreaded going home each night as I knew he was probably going to be drunk and find some new issue to complain about.

Even my professional life wasn’t going so well. Previously my manager and I had had an excellent relationship.

We had even transcended the manager to employee relationship and considered each other good friends who would perhaps go on cool international travel adventures together once the world got past COVID-19. 

Things got pretty rocky in July, however, with the two of us taking passionate opposing stances on a number of developments in our team.

Oh, and did I mention my Grandma died during this time as well?

A romantic life in shambles, an emotionally abusive landlord, a stressful work life, poor physical health, and near complete isolation.

Childhood friends? Living in the US. Other friends? Scattered across the globe due to the pandemic. Family? Almost everyone was too busy to take a call except for my mom.

I was feeling tired from working everyday, but what else was there to live for? The only ounce of happiness I’d tasted this month was earning my FreeCodeCamp Front-End Libraries Certificate.

So, once I completed that I started working on the APIs and Microservices projects on FCC. Most weeks I worked well over 60 hours and there was at least one week I crossed the 70 hour mark of deeply focused flow-esque work.

I started to realize how burnt out I was towards the end of the month. I got a fever and started to think about taking time off in September or October to travel around Vietnam a bit.

The last week of the month I decided one night I would go juggle at Saigon’s walking street. Doing so was always a good way to meet interesting people and chat.

Sometimes I met Europeans traveling through Vietnam, sometimes teenagers from the provinces, and sometimes families who enjoyed sitting for 15 minutes to watch me perform different juggling tricks.

In any case, I had some fun that night chatting with new people and performing for crowds in the middle of the city. I’d had so much fun that I didn’t start heading home until nearly midnight.

And why call a taxi or GrabCar to take me home? My back hurt from working on the computer so much so why not try to walk off that pain?

Mental exhaustion, physical exhaustion, hallucinations, late night walk alone in a mega-city in the developing world during the world’s worst economy in 100 years… It was a recipe for disaster, and indeed disaster came.

I won’t go into the details here, but it was quite a traumatic night, especially considering how bad the summer had already been going up until that point.

August

This was the month I crashed. I’d already been really burnt out coming into the summer, but the events at the end of July set me into a tailspin.

This month I experienced one of the lowest moments of my life — a panic attack in the middle of the night with violent full body convulsions. I can still hear the screeches, “Anh không muốn sống nữa!”, “Anh không muốn sống nữa!”

It had been almost 10 years since I had been in such a dark place. It’s gruesome to think about, but one more major setback in August and you may have had an abrupt ending to this story…

Luckily, that wasn’t the case. And although life didn’t feel like it was worth living, I “knew” on a logical level that this problem too could be worked out of.

So work I did. And by the end of the month I had completed FreeCodeCamp’s 300 hours back-end curriculum consisting of dozens of lessons and 5 back-end projects from start-to-finish in less than 7 weeks — while simultaneously working a full-time 40-45 hour/week job and a 10 hour/week teaching job!

Note: I finished building the last of the back-end projects during the final week of August. I waited a few days to “claim” my certificate, however, which is why it shows September 1st.

September

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I was still stressed, but the worst of the summer had passed. I was far from normal, but I had at least gotten past the “Unfit to stand on the rooftop of a tall building stage.”

Unfortunately, 2020 hadn’t taken off its boxing gloves yet. *POW* My other grandma, one of my closest family members my and last surviving grandparent — dead. I love and miss you Grandma.

But remember, I’m in Vietnam. Mental health issues? Depression? That’s not something that’s really talked about here. It could even be seen as a sign of weakness.

I’m trying not to lose my jobs so I fake a smile at the office. I fake a smile in the classroom. I’m in pain, but I can’t show it.

October

Let’s take another zinger to the mouth. I receive my first sub-par performance review since becoming a software developer.

This really hurt as I felt work and professional development was the only thing I had done well with the last few months.

On the bright side, I at least had a couple opportunities to travel this month. My language center sent me to work in Đồng Xoài one weekend.

This town had about 150,000 people. It was peaceful. The air was clean. The traffic was reasonable. I loved it! The students were also great.

They were much more enthusiastic and respectful than the students you’d find in your typical Ho Chi Minh City language school.

I also had the chance to visit some different parts of Phan Thiết. I visited Phú Thủy for the first time in my life.

I also visited the nearby Mũi Né for the first time in almost 5 years. 5 days of quality travel helped ease the pain I’d been going through.

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At the end of the month I also gave a small juggling performance and rapped in Vietnamese for my colleagues at my company’s 2nd birthday party!

November

November was a lucrative, albeit tiring month. In addition to my full-time software development gig I taught my regular English classes in Saigon on the weekend plus even more classes teaching in Bình Phước Province.

This month I taught in Đồng Xoài one weekend and taught in Bình Long another weekend.

I enjoyed having the opportunity to visit both towns, but I definitely preferred Đồng Xoài over Bình Long.

I enjoyed eating at some middle aged woman’s food stand in Đồng Xoài. She sold “Bún Thịt Nướng Huế” which was a new variation of another Vietnamese food I enjoy eating.

She got a kick out of speaking Vietnamese with me — so much so that she offered me some free “Chè” for dessert.

Unfortunately, November was also the month I learned about the danger of rove beetles or as we call them in Vietnam… kiến ba khoang.

I didn’t realize these things were dangerous and I brushed one off  my hand at the end of October. I didn’t realize why my hand was discolored until early November one of my colleagues mentioned, “Kiến ba khoang”.

I also thought the discoloration would go away after a week or so. NOPE. 3 weeks later my hand was still scarred. Luckily, after a month or so of applying scarring medicine my hand healed.

November was also the month I let loose and spent a bunch of money on new electronics. 

December

2020 started strong. It got pretty sketchy in the middle. But… I was determined to finish the year strong.

In December I was determined to work hard, but also to start enjoying life more.

Week 1 — I spent many long days at the office followed by nights preparing a Tech Talk for the React Native developers at my company. I also had a solid date night at a French restaurant.

Weeks 2 + 3 — I gave a Tech Talk at my company about how to implement animations in cross-platform apps using the React Native Animated API. I also got a massage, bought some new outdoor clothes, and enjoyed a trip with my company to Phú Quốc.

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Weeks 4 + 5 — I spent most of my time working. I did take a few evenings off to go on a nice Christmas Eve dinner date, and to plan a trip to Northern Vietnam in 2021.

Review

Let’s talk about what did and didn’t go well in 2020.

The Good

Work

I’m a much better software developer than I was a year ago. A year ago I was unquestionably the weakest software developer on my team. Not only was I the worst software developer on my team, but I was so much worse than the other developers that I didn’t even feel like I belonged on the team!

Now, I’m still nowhere close to being a senior software engineer. But… there’s no longer a question of whether I’m a legitimate software developer. I do belong on my team now and I know it.

I even had the chance to mentor one of the incoming interns at my company this year (her internship was a success and she’s now working as a full-time React Native developer on my team!).

While I still get stuck sometimes, my debugging skills and resourcefulness are significantly higher than they were a year ago. These improvements have resulted in me becoming a much more self-reliant developer than I was a year ago.

During 2020 I also earned two certificates from FreeCodeCamp:

Front End Libraries + APIs and Microservices (both pictured earlier in this post.

Over the next year I’d like to continue improving my craft and advance from junior to mid-level.

Finances

Despite 2020 being the worst economic year since the Great Recession, I did alright for myself this year. Many people have had difficulty finding or keeping work this year.

Fortunately, countless hours of hard work have resulted in my compensation as a software developer increasing by a significant amount over the past year (> 30%).

I was also able to save around 25% of my income for the year despite some large unexpected expenses. Keeping an English teaching side gig definitely helped to keep this number high (and it would have been even higher had COVID-19 not closed down the classes for several months)!

This upward trend will continue with 2021 being the most profitable year of my life.

Travel

Despite the pandemic, I was able to visit 4 new cities in 2020. Travel makes me feel alive. It rejuvenates my soul. I’ve forgotten that at times over the last few years.

This fact will not be forgotten in 2021.

The bad

Social Life

I probably have enough fingers to count the number of times I hung out with friends in 2020. Given that life in Vietnam was pretty normal for about 10/12 months this year, I definitely didn’t get out enough.

Safety

In my 2016 year in review post I said that I need to remember which part of the world I’m living in and remember the unique risks someone in my position faces.

I did well for a few years and then got complacent.

Content Creation

I did well with creating new videos for my travel, coding, and Vietnamese YouTube channels the first quarter of 2020. I don’t think I created a single video (or blog post) for the last 9 months of the year, however.

Life got in the way. I don’t intend for content creation to be a full-time gig, but I definitely want to get back to having a fun hobby outside of work.

Health

My diet was pretty much the only healthy thing about me in 2020. My health issues were so numerous that I broke this section up into several sub-sections for better readability. Let’s start.

Fitness

In 2020 I didn’t exercise nearly enough. I don’t look good, I don’t feel good, and my physical stature commands absolutely no respect from anyone.

I’m several years removed now from having the athletic body type I had my last few years of high school. I intend to get back to having that lean, yet shredded physique again this year.

Mental health/Stress overload

I delayed taking enough time off in 2020 because I was so determined to become the best developer possible ASAP. 

I accomplished some great things in 2020. I completed an entire 600 hour software curriculum in about 5 months while working 2 jobs (1 full-time and 1 part-time).

Though I can be pretty hard on myself, this is one accomplishment I’m really proud of.

It didn’t come without a cost, however. I ignored pretty much every other area of my life to accomplish it, and really stressed myself out in the process.

I’m working hard to build a fulfilling life for myself and my loved ones — not to jump off a bridge or die of a heart attack at 41.

I took a big ‘L’ here.

Sleep

I averaged about 7.75 hours of sleep this year (if you include mid-day naps). While that may be adequate for some people, I felt it wasn’t quite enough for me.

The Cause of All of My Problems?

Unrefined systems. I spent too much time and mental energy on things that could have been largely automated with systems or pre-determined with rules.

Entrepreneurs often say, “You need to work on the business not in the business.”

I think the same applies for my life. I need to focus bigger picture and create more systems and habits that ensure life balance and success in all areas of my life.

In 2021 I intend to continue working hard. The difference is that I’ll also strive to minimize unnecessary decision making via systems, habits, and routines.

I’ll also provide outlets for my stress rather than simply telling myself to toughen up and that all of this will be worth it one day.

I’ll write these out in detail over the coming weeks but some examples I may potentially apply include:

• Meditation for 20 minutes every morning (I think this will be HUGE, as I live pretty stuck in my head these days).

• Weights at the gym every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday before work.

• 30 minutes of professional development every weeknight after work.

• One new video should be edited and uploaded to each YouTube channel by the 25th of each month.

Beyond designing better systems, I also need to review my goals more often to evaluate where I’m currently at and have more abundant opportunities to course correct.

Conclusion

2020 was a difficult year. It broke me. It almost ended me. But despite the lows, I also had some great accomplishments and experiences this year.

I evolved in 2020. I finished the year strong. I’m mentally stable once more and dare I even say happy 🙂

As I finish writing this post I feel at peace. I’ll remember 2020 as the year of “Pain, exertion, and struggle”.

The soundtrack for 2021 is yet to be confirmed. I’ve got a feeling, however, that this year is going to skip to the beats of “Reflect, realign, and restructure.”

Become still. Breathe. Enter presence. Release your pain body. Feel love. Feel connected. Live in this state, and let your actions flow from it.

Do so, and 2021 will be the most successful year of your life. 

Even more important than the external accolades, however, is the internal peace and fulfillment that will also come.

Let’s stop talking about it. Let’s live it.