The past year has been an amazing one, but before getting into the details, I’d love to share some thoughts on 2017 as I have been struggling to talk about it for quite a while.

Coming from a tough 2017

On February 2017, we moved to San Francisco as it seemed to be a great professional opportunity for both me and Lucia. It turned out to be one of the most challenging years:

• Lucia gave up her job in London and couldn’t find anything good
• Our dog Coco passed away (we miss him so much)
• Timezones and distance with family and friends
• I wasn’t as happy as before at my job

The transition between Madrid and London was so smooth that I think we overestimated how difficult it would be to move to a different continent, country, and city.

We almost gave up, every week we would sit down and discuss moving back. We were so contaminated that we couldn’t enjoy anything, even the good news. I still feel guilty for asking Lucia to move with me giving up her job.

When things couldn’t get worse, we did a hard reset. We forced ourselves to be more positive, to give it a try, and things started (slowly) to feel better. I know it sounds like bullshit, but sometimes looking at the same problems with different eyes is a good first step towards a better situation.

It’s been an amazing 2018!

The past 2018 was arguably one of the best years of my life. It was the first time I’ve managed not just to accomplish my own goals, but also helped others to achieve theirs. After all we have gone through, I feel we deserved it.

• Helped Lucia with a career change into Front-End Development.
• Changed jobs and joined Microsoft Azure DevOps
• Run my first marathon and a total of 670 Km
• Traveled more: Yosemite, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Vegas, Mexico, Seattle, Raleigh…
• Shot a lot of photos
• Build and launched my website
• Got promoted at Microsoft (finally?)
• Sold my first company, Erasmusu (excellent job, Javi, Emilio, and Ivan!)
• Modeled more 3D stuff
• Failed at reading more books

The best thing happened at the end of the year, after an entire year studying on her own on a full-time basis, Lucia landed her first job as a Front-End Developer. There are no words to describe how happy and accomplished we both felt after this entire year of tireless effort. Being able to share and enjoy some common goals with other people has been the most significant learning from this year. I’d love to do more of that during 2019.

Because one picture is worth a thousand words… here are a few summarizing my year 🙂.

Thanks to everyone that helped to make a fantastic year. I’m planning to share my goals for 2019 in an upcoming post. Until then, Happy New Year to everyone! 🙂