Ohh well... It’s been several years since my last job as a software developer. I spent some time to recoup my strengths, took care of a few outstanding personal issues, explored several avenues of personal development and was able to put some closures. What kind of pretentious malarkey is this? :) I know… it certainly sounds like it but it seems that over the course of my professional career in software development I wasn’t able to balance work and personal life very well which resulted in a growing number of regrets, feelings of missing out which all got me to a point of a standstill and, at-times, even feelings of being stuck.

I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to put things on pause, reflect on things and then have time to not only gather myself back together but to become a much better developer. Despite not working in the industry I never stopped learning, being away allowed me to acquant myself with the ever-growing world of front-end technologies, something what I felt was always missing in my portfolio of skills. Fifteen years ago, when I got my BS in CS, front-end seemed to be like a "Wild Wild West" while at the same time server-side looked more settled,mature and serious. Javascript, in my eyes, was a toy tool; so I went into industry to work on backend projects in several large companies and smaller-scale startups.

While working I contributed to designs and played major role in development of several large backend projects which served as a backbone for integrations with third-party companies worldwide. Those data processing pipelines sifted millions of events from public-facing APIs and I can proudly say that my work had a direct impact on the experiences of millions of people.

But, at times, it felt that the amount of efforts I've been putting into my work wasn't receiving appropriate gradification (quite common for people whose work isn’t “visible” so to speak), while people who worked on the front-end projects were able to receive feedback for their work constantly and hence their gratification was simply better.

That is why I wanted to expand my skills so that I can participate in projects of a wider spectrum. That being said, I must acknowledge the fact that its hard if not impossible to know all aspects of front and backend tech stacks in depth and, having spread your skillset so wide, it means that I’m not really good at any particular aspect of the development. But I pick up things very quickly and able to context switch quite easily whenever a need arises. Lastly, being a full-stack developer simply feels more holistic :)

Alright, I feel like the batteries in my word-generating brain cells are about to be depleted. I’m looking forward to 2023 to become The Year of a Great Comeback! :) Hopefully, no more pandemics, recessions… wars… will interfere with it this time.

My first step is to put this website into somewhat coherent and presentable state which hopefully should help me with a painful job search process and, who knows, may be it can serve as a starting point of my new carrier as a full-stack developer!!! Hooray!!! :)

P.S. May be I should've titled this blog post “Hello World! Once Again”