Yep, it’s hard to believe, but I’m still here, although this blog looks a bit abandoned :) It actually was abandoned, and now I regret it a lot. So many things have happened since the year 2020, and I’ll try to mention at least the most important of them.
I started this blog, because I was so bored sitting in the quarantine, and I wanted some place to share my thoughts about various tech topics and (a bit) personal life. Because it’s hard not to mention personal events at all (at least for me).
During these times I stepped from PyCharm a bjt and started working on our new data science IDE - DataSpell. It was a lot of fun, a new team with new processes, new areas, continuous experiments and discussions! It wasn’t easy, but it was a lot of fun and at the end of 2021 DataSpell was launched.
In 2021 various quarantines and restrictions were still in action and I missed conferences so much, so I experimented and created my own YouTube channel - to have a place for self-expression and talking on tech topics. It was fun, but I definitely underestimated the time needed for video production! To have nice (at least nice) videos - you should spend a lot of time in video editor and on YouTube, doing a lot of extremely boring stuff like removing mistakes, splitting it into parts, adding timecodes and thumbnails. The most important part - thinking about interesting topics and examples - was the smallest part in the whole process, unfortunately. And without a bare minimum video quality it’s so difficult to promote videos (and to become popular :))
Actually I was going to continue my video experiments in 2022 (I had a pause for getting my driving license), but then all my life was cracked and mixed. The war in Ukraine started. Several months I spent in a shocked state, passing all the phases from denial till depression and vice versa. A lot of things were happening altogether, and it was impossible to focus on something or understand what to do next. Meanwhile, JetBrains decided to shut down all the offices in Russia and suggested all employees relocate.
Because of some internal people permutations I returned to the PyCharm team, but on a Technical Lead position this time. It was a challenge for me, because it was the first role including management tasks for me. Additional challenge was to combine this change with unplanned relocation to the new country.
I’ll be honest: it was tough. First several months were the hardest part, because it was necessary to remember thousands of tasks and deadlines both in real life and at work. It was a good lesson on the importance of time management skills.
And only now, after the hard end of the year and Christmas holidays, I’m finally back to more or less normal state. By “normal”, I mean the state when I have time and (most importantly) energy to do something in addition to work tasks: visit meetups, read non-fiction books or write this blog post, for example :)
In 2023, it’s become so much harder to make any plans about my life. Now, when I have an experience of throwing away almost all my life plans within several weeks, I’m not going to make any commitments about this blog, or YouTube videos or conference talks or whatever. I just hope in 2023 I’ll have enough energy to learn something new and interesting and share it with you! Stay tuned!
