I'm not Jewish, but early September has always felt like a new year to me. This year is no different. After a sometimes quiet, sometimes challenging, I am ready for renewal, focus, and growth.
The New Year is a great time to reflect on our achievements and goals. I think I achieved a lot of personal goals in the past year, but professionally, it was a quiet year. Goals to me have always had the "agile" pathway: I focus on something to accomplish, accomplish it, then focus on the next thing. Sometimes that leads me nowhere and I pursue topics that are interesting but don't bring me lasting joy or professional advancement.
My proudest achievement this year. was earning my AWS Solutions Architect - Professional certification. I did this on my own, organizing my own lessons and study, working weekends and evenings, and I have the pride of ownership of something that is purely mine. I think to continue that goal, I need more connections and more opportunities to excel.
I read a lot of Medium articles on Snowflake, AWS, Software Development, and Project Management. I write articles as well. Sometimes, I'll pick an article because I get blindsided by my lack of knowledge on a subject. I have aspirations as a Big Data Expert, but recently I made an embarrassing flub when asked to describe how Snowflake RBAC works. I actually didn't even know what RBAC was. So, I rolled up my sleeves and wrote a couple of articles:
I'm biased, but I think the articles are good; otherwise, I wouldn't have submitted them to the Snowflake publication. I guess follow the mantra: "I see and I forget, I hear and I remember, I do and I understand, I teach and I really understand.." Writing an article is a bit like teaching.
In the next Rosh Hashana, I want to be able to look back and say that I used my knowledge this year to build something truly important using Snowflake, Databricks, and AWS. If I had laments of this year, it felt like my projects were all one-offs, without lasting value to the world. I believe in myself, and I believe I can do better.