Time for reflection. This is the seventh time I take the time to jot down my thoughts about the previous year. Looking back through the things I wrote over the years, it’s fascinating to observe the road I’ve travelled and what I found important each year. Those observations also give me the motivation to continue with this habit.

Here’s what happened in 2019, in no particular order:

• I’ve read 17975 pages across 57 books. Most of them on Kindle due to its portability and ability to sync across multiple devices. A dozen on Audible and a couple of paperbacks. I’ll highlight five books I’ve enjoyed:
  • Educated. Over the last couple of years, I’ve started to relish biographies and autobiographies. Tara’s story is one of the best autobiographies I’ve read during the last couple of years. You can click the link to see my full review for Educated and all the other books mentioned here.
  • Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.. There are no directly my work-related books on this list. While there are some engineering and leadership books (like Resilient Management) I’ve enjoyed quite a bit, I was not able to find enough valuable new lessons in them. Surprisingly, I was able to find practical business and leadership advice in a book about an oil magnate from the 19th century. And in addition to that, his life-story is captivating.
  • Where the Crawdads Sing. The best fiction book I read in 2019, simply perfect.
  • All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of the Wire. The Wire is my favourite TV show ever. This book worked as a wonderful companion piece to the show.
  • Tiamat’s Wrath. I wrote last year that “The Expanse” book series is back to being amazing. It continues to be so.

• The five movies I’ve enjoyed the most in 2019: Parasite, The Lighthouse, Avengers: Endgame, Burning and Knives Out. I also made a list of my favorite 2010s movies, where I’ve put Parasite at number four.

• In the same breath, I’ll mention that I thoroughly enjoyed the TV show Chernobyl. And not just because it was partially filmed in Lithuania.

• Vinted, a company I’ve been with for seven years, had another very successful year. We grew our business and got another step closer towards making second-hand the first choice. We became Lithuania’s first tech unicorn. I’m delighted with what we’ve managed to accomplish during 2019. My job - leading engineering - provided many challenges for me personally. As the organization grows, I continue to learn to trust the people around me with decisions that I’ve used to be involved with.

• I’ve continued the habit of having my Wednesdays entirely blocked off with “no meetings”. With only a couple of minor exceptions, I’ve managed to keep Wednesday the day I systemize information, think through issues, go through email and prepare written communication.

• I only wrote one blog post in 2019. I have list of topics I would like to write about (a bunch of them about technical leadership and software engineering). Let’s see if I get to them in 2020.

• I’ve spoken at MobileOne, Agile Tour, VilniusPHP, No Trolls Allowed and a couple of other events. Most of my talks can be found here.

• I went to one conference as an attendee - Lead Dev London 2019. It was my fourth time participating in Lead Dev.

• Vilnius Tech Leads, which I was inspired to build after visiting Lead Dev, continued strong. We had exciting topics, enlighting talks and the meetup grew to one of the biggest in Vilnius.

• I wrote almost no code this year. Pronto is doing more than excellent with other people at the helm. I also did not prioritize learning any new technologies. I feel a bit of an itch to try to write a bit more code this year or play around with some interesting tech.

• I’ve stopped going to therapy after more than two rewarding years. Therapy helped me get to know myself better, accept my relationships with my family (and others) and even taught some useful tools for my job.

• Me and the love of my life got engaged ❤️.

• We took a three-week vacation to Vietnam in March. Our trip of the year. Vietnam is a beautiful country with some fantabulous food.

• I’ve continued to become a better cook, which my fiancée says that she’s pleased about.

• My fiancée gifted me an Upright Go. My posture certainly needs help, hope that Upright Go will help make a sustained change.

I’m thrilled with how 2019 went. I’m also optimistic about 2020. I’m not ignorant - there are bad things happening in the world. Climate change makes me a bit anxious. Yet I continue to stay positive about humanity’s ability to come together and prevail.