2019 Recap 💫💥✨
Another year passed. Reason enough to summarize the major milestones I reached in the last ~365 days...
Finishing my studies 🎓
The year started with a month of „Workation“. Having quit my former company NewStore in December, left me with enough time in January to finally finish my Master Thesis and therefore my Master of Science degree, which I started in 2015. Looking back, I‘m very happy that I achieved that, next to family, friends, and a regular job. Was it worth it? Will it pay off? I will either notice later or never :)
Changing the job 💼
One day busy printing the Thesis, a day later I started my new job at Storm Reply GmbH as a Senior Consultant. Specializing in Kubernetes I now help clients run their workloads on Kubernetes clusters (mainly operated on AWS). To me, it is a novel way of participating in relevant projects for interesting clients, most of them at an entirely different scale than I have worked before. This leads me to the next topic...
Kubernetes ⛴
Concerning my new role, I have a direct interest in showing proficiency in Kubernetes-related topics. The certification as Kubernetes Administrator and Application Developer was therefore mandatory.
Sure, a proven record of work in a given area is more worth than every certification. But by finishing these exams I and a few of my new colleagues were able to bring a significant contribution to our company, as we can now carry the claim as an official Kubernetes Service Provider. Reaching this state we set the foundation for a new business area with increasing demand.
In summarizing I learned a lot this year, gave talks on Kubernetes, and, together with my fellow Max we even started giving dedicated Kubernetes training.
The apex of my year, related to Kubernetes, has been the KubeCon in San Diego, which was not only my first time attending a KubeCon but also my first time visiting the U.S.!
Winter Sports ⛷
I‘m happy that I managed to stay on ski and went downhill for the first time, before I turned 30. I had a blast and wondered, why I had only yet started doing winter sports. It was a lot of fun. Though I have to admit: my daughter Charlotte, who also stood on the ski for the first time made an equally, if not better impression than me...
Camping Tour 2019 🚐
This year we did our third tour in a camper van. 3 weeks of vacation, driving more than 3.000 km through 4 countries. Especially memorable was Slovenia with its beautiful national parks, rivers, and farm camping culture. I visited Slovenia for the first time - it is for sure an underrated country and vacation destination. Next year we will again do a tour and I‘m looking forward to it!
Vegetarian Diet 🌱
Having a vacation leaves you with a lot of time for overthinking behavior and global developments like climate change. Experiencing the second peak-temperature summer in a row made me think a lot about what kind of world my daughter will grow up in. Only when she was five years old did she see snow for the first time - due to comparably mild winters before.
In recent years, I read some literature covering the human treatment of animals (Tiere Denken, Richard David Precht) and why we eat them (Tiere Essen/Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer). This put me in a continuous process of consciously observing my meat consumption. I increasingly challenged were „my“ meat is coming from and which consequences its production had.
Meat consumption is one of the major drivers of CO2 emissions and at the same time the easiest thing to avoid to have a positive impact on climate.
While I still like the taste of a good steak and doubt that a vegetarian Ramen can really be named a Ramen, I realized, that about 70% of my meat consumption was based on cheap, relatively „low quality“ meat. That kind of stuff you get when you eat any kind of Fast-Food, etc.
I began to understand that, my (in almost 30 years) trained desire for meat is irrational. There is simply no reason a human needs to have meat on a daily menu. Realizing this, I simply conducted a „meatless week“ and stopped eating it.
In the beginning, I (think I) noticed some physical changes in the first few weeks (constant feeling of weakness, issues concentrating, this kind of stuff...), but I overcame this entirely.
To be honest, I still eat meat from time to time (vegetarian Ramen is just not the same!), but in the last 6 months, this happened only a couple of times. Compared to eating meat on a daily routine definitely an improvement.
Therefore I wouldn’t call myself a „vegetarian“. I simply reduced eating meat for Ecological and partly ethical reasons.
Golang Meetup 👨🏻💻
For over a year now my former colleague Tobias Pauling and I are hosting Hannovers Golang Meetup „Hannover Gophers“. I can‘t say, that it is a huge success. I guess Hannover is simply too small to continuously bring more than 5-10 meetup participants. But also I think that’s not what a meetup is about: Hannover Gophers is intended to be a regular platform for like-minded people. Sometimes the monthly frequency is an issue and hardly compatible with family and job.
Pretty neat for a thing that started as a hobby to be interested in Go as a programming language 4 years ago. I would argue that Golang is now my main programming language.
Amewu 🎤
Ten years ago I listened to the music of Amewu for the first time. After visiting a handful of his gigs in the meantime I had the chance to talk to him this year at one of his gigs in Leipzig for the first time. I cannot say it was a very deep discussion, but (for me) still a very nice memory ;)
Family 👨👩👧
While a lot of family-related things happened in the last year (like my daughter losing her first and second tooth) I don‘t want to make this website a platform for too private thoughts. However, I still want to mention them. 2019 was a very work intense year and I did a lot of compromises on them (where 1 week being away for KubeCon is the least one!). They are always there when I need them, covering my back. I am extremely thankful for having them and, for the next year, want to focus more on my family instead of me and my work.
Let's see how I manage this.