I’ve been recently been bit with the writing bug again, but I don´t know how long this will last (you can check for yourself how long ago was the last post on this blog, and more importantly it was the only one that survived).

Reading my previous post had me thinking about my career so far and how writing can preserve my thoughts at a point in time, and generally make for a pretty interesting read on the future. My memory isn’t the best, and I tend to think writing to bve the best medium to preserve my thoughts for myself.

The year is 2019

At that time, I was employed at Biggy, working with e-commerce recommendation engines, which was my first real programming job, as stated in that post. I’m still at the same company kinda. That year was also a pivotal moment in my career, and Biggy’s journey, being exactly the year when it was acquired by VTEX, my current employer.

That year also marked several personal milestones: I traveled abroad for the first time (twice!), my nephew was just born (he’s now almost 5 years old) and the world was yet to see what the word pandemic meant. My first international trip was also something I wish I had a better recollection of, as it was part of my interview process for Spotify, which ended with me not landing the job, but learning a lot throughout the process.

Fast-forward 5 years

If I answered “how do you see yourself in 5 years?” back then, would the answer be close to the reality of today? Mostly no. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t accomplish things I was hoping for, it actually means I accomplish things I did not foresaw. This may be an improvement or not, I won’t get too hanged up on that.

A big part of that journey was due to VTEX and the people I work with on a daily basis. Being part of a welcoming team and working with interesting problems made it very difficult to accept any huge changes (and there were opportunities for some of those).

Something that held me in place for some time was my academic journey. Graduating for me was a slow process, as I was already working, sometimes I got very disgruntled with the classes and assignments. It was actually the pandemic that made me focus a bit more in my studies, but the full-fledged graduated status only came in the near end of those 5 years.

Living abroad has been a big dream of mine, and maybe the strongest difference from my ideal self of 5 years ago. I hadn’t been giving that much thought to this since recently, and it’s something that I’m setting my eyesight on for the near future.

What does the next 5 years hold?

I can’t predict the future, but I’m certain my current actions will help shape it, and one thing that I can do is control my current actions. My last years have been a cruise in order to reach some sort of financial security, and I few that the time has come to lean on that security and take more risks.

I’m pretty confident that the work I like to do is coding, as simple as that, and I’ll try to optimize this on the opportunities going forward. That means I’m most likely not follow a management path in the near future, and set my sights on improving myself as a specialist. This has been something that I’ve poured a lot of thought into, and I find myself more certain than ever about this path.

Another thing that is crucial to me is self-improvement through working on my body. There are lots of people out there that have given general wisdom about mind and body being connected, so I won’t be adding much to that discussion (and I don’t have significant knowledge to do so). But what I can say is that working out and practicing sports has been a beneficial hobby, for my mind and body.

And I dare finish with: I should write more. I like writing and, moreover, I like reading my thoughts at a later point. So Iĺl try to document what I find interesting and have been working on as learning projects, but also, maintaining a healthy check-up of what is on my mind.

This should’ve probably be a disclaimer at the top, but I’ll leave it here: the writing here is the definition of rambling. I wrote what came up at the top of my head without much thought, and this will probably have use only for me in the future.