As I wrote my year-in-review in Japanese, I came to the conclusion that I was “surprisingly content” with the year. Not because it was easy or went as planned, but despite it – as you can imagine.

This year I:

• experienced the first cancellation of WordCamp of the year due to the pandemic as an organizer
• co-organized do_action Japan
• spent more time with kids while their daycare was entirely/partially closed between April and July
• didn’t get to see my parents and relatives at all 😢
• picked up Spanish again, made 180+ days streak on Duolingo 💪
• enjoyed learning about positive psychology through a Coursera course & podcast, and as a result:
• reduced the usage of Facebook & Instagram by 90% or so
• started learning about video editing and subtitling technologies

Thanks to some of the things I ended up doing and of course those who supported and inspired me, 2020 turned out to be a year for good reflection. I also feel more grounded than before, shedding some things I thought were important before but actually aren’t.

I’m especially grateful to my work and team/colleagues – seeing remote/distributed work become more mainstream this year made me realize that the (fortunate) situation I’m in isn’t easily replaceable by just having the freedom to decide where I work. They truly care about our well-being and I was saved by that while I struggled to balance between taking care of kids and getting things done at work.

And now, I’m really ready to leave all those behind and say goodbye to 2020. I hope to see you around in the Polyglots community and WordCamp Japan (online) in 2021!