I turned 27 a month ago. I’ve not written a birthday post in a while (last time was turning 24, three years ago) so decided to write something for this one. Not that 27 is a special year or anything (well, I guess it is (un)special in the sense that it only comes once in a lifetime). However I do somehow feel 27 is a round number.

It is hard to explain, but I think I’m at the line that separates an early adult and a full real adult. It’s complicated, and I feel like neither to be very honest.

This year was quite exciting, from settling into my new role at CareerFoundry as a web & security engineer, to traveling around a bit, to getting my dream flat in the Neukölln district of Berlin (only to lose it six months later, but hey, not everything has to work out :), to getting my dream job at Mozilla, it has been a really happening year.

I’m really looking forward to this year. New job, new apartment, new part of the city, new technologies to learn and master. So much to be excited about. I decided to write more starting on my birthday, and I’ve been seeing good progress in the last month and a half since then. I’ll document my note-taking habit in an article about Obsidian soon.

My hope for the next one year is to get some stability into my life which got a bit rough in H2. Also hope to do well at work and life in general, but we’ll see that.

Currently I’m into this game called Life is Strange and have been listening to sound tracks from it. I play chess around once or twice per day, and sometimes paint.

Work takes up most of my time, but that’s expected and I’m really enjoying the new learnings coming my way. Overall, life’s good. I’ll go into more detail regarding some of the things I’m up to in separate articles.

Thank you for reading!

The 3rd of this month marked the completion my 24th year of existence, 24 revolutions around the sun, 24 years of the limited time that we are all handed when we board this earth train.

These were 24 years of great health, a relatively problem free life and great learnings. I’ve met and became friends with some amazing people who’ve made me question my priorities and values. Speaking of priorities, they’ve changed as well, although whether for the good or otherwise is something only time will tell. From someone who read and preached science (and be annoying sometimes), to becoming obsessed with my desktop PC and learning security (and be annoying most times), picking up social skills and learning how to talk to people (if you’re surprised this is something people need to learn separately, you’re probably not friends with many nerds), getting into web and open source, getting a full time job and so on. Life has had its share of twists and turns but it has been a joyride so far.

So how does it feel to be 24 years old? I think it is a superb feeling. Many things are changing, mostly for the good. People take you seriously, sort of. You feel the added responsibility when making decisions; decisions about your life and about those who surround you. People also seem to trust you with your decisions, which is nice. It feels like, finally, you’re in the driver’s seat. Eating what you like, taking care of your health and fitness and those kind of things have also picked up pace. On a health related note, I did a fair bit of outdoor sporting this year after around a decade long pause. With a sample size of one, I also think that the tendency to do things to please others, in general, goes on diminishing as we age.

At some point, I realized that some regrets are better than others. Regretting your decisions is better than other people’s. Similarly, regretting doing something is often better than the regret of not doing it. You also realize that many problems that you face are actually your choices. You can’t escape problems, but you can choose the ones you’d like to tackle by making conscious choices.

In the past couple of years, I’ve become a bit more independent; earn enough to support myself and my hobbies, and lived alone in my own flat. Moving to Berlin was by far the main highlight of this year. Like I keep mentioning, moving to a new city is like being handed a blank book. You can correct your past regrets, and try to be the person you always wanted to be, and not worry about your past self’s image in other people’s mind conflicting with the new one (for reasons which I’d not try to justify, I find it similar to starting a new code project versus fixing a legacy one).

And as always, with the added authority comes added responsibility. I noticed that I think longer before making decisions or even simply speaking, since those things now have consequences (and some people, my parents included, sometimes count on me to do the thinking). Overall, the theme of the last couple of paragraphs is that 24 is a good age to gain some autonomy, confidence in your self, control over your life and explore a bit. Not physically, necessarily, but philosophically, in the sense of what your values are, what do you expect from the people around you and what do you give them in return.

Thank you for reading!