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+Title: Review of 2020
+Date: 2021-05-16
+Category:
+Tags:
+Slug: 2020
+Lang: en
+Summary:
+    The review of our year 2020 at ElenQ Technology.
+
+It's been a while since the previous post here, and it's not because I don't
+have anything to talk about. I've been working on many things since the
+previous one.
+
+I wanted to write specifically about something I'm doing these days, but that's
+difficult to contextualize if there's a full year gap in the middle. So I
+decided to talk about the 2020 and make a short review about what we did so we
+can look forward and see what can we build from this.
+
+#### 2020 at ElenQ Technology
+
+2020 have been harsh for everyone, including ElenQ Technology. We started the
+year with a lot of energy and we were pretty busy with courses here and there.
+But then the pandemic came and all the in-person training stopped so we lost
+our main income source, which is also one of the works I personally enjoy the
+most.
+
+So, after finishing our course on *Modern C++* in July (we'll talk about that
+in a future post), right after we were freed from the lockdown here, everything
+stopped. No more in-person courses, no more clients, nothing.
+
+We knew that the pandemic was affecting the economy so we were well aware that
+there were few chances to get clients in the rest of the year. Thankfully, we
+had some work to do: [ElenQ Publishing](https://publishing.elenq.tech/en/).
+
+We spent the summer and part of the autumn preparing the books, the printing
+and making the paperwork as well as the tools we needed for the website and
+future books. By November 13 we already had every book shipped and the
+website was almost ready. At the beginning of December, the website was
+finished and published.
+
+It was more work than we expected but now we have a complete set of tools for
+future publications, that can cover any of the points of the process with
+almost no human interaction. We automated almost everything, and those things
+we didn't automate are simple things once you know how to make them.
+
+Of course, as engineers, we only consider automating things that we are going
+to repeat so you can think about all this work as a plan to keep publishing new
+material in the future.
+
+It's really interesting to mention that our whole process is reproducible as we
+are using [Guix](https://guix.gnu.org) as a tool, so no matter what happens we
+could still go back in time and remake the books exactly as they were when we
+published them.
+
+As you see, at a company level, most of our work of 2020 was focused on
+teaching and making the books (another form of teaching), because it's
+something I personally enjoy a lot and I'd say it's more fulfilling than
+anything else I've done. But it was sadly affected by the pandemic, so we need
+to reorganize a little bit our strategy.
+
+#### Personal level
+
+Of course, I spend time on other things too. A great part of my job is to
+randomly research anything I find interesting, so I can keep my mind fresh for
+the possible projects that may come. This gives me tools and ideas, and also
+lets me learn from other people.
+
+During the year I spent some time contributing to Guix, for [reasons I already
+discussed here](https://ekaitz.elenq.tech/donations-guix-01.html).  The most
+notable contributions were the addition of a really interesting package that
+was missing: Meshlab; and the correction of a package that was failing to
+compile for months: FreeCAD.
+
+Being locked at home, I also had the chance to go back to electronics, which
+are a huge part of what I studied at university, but I never had the chance to
+work on that in a professional level. I even designed some PCBs, produced
+and soldered them with the highest level of quality possible. It was a great
+experience.
+
+On the other hand, I also needed some time to relax and try to recover from
+some longstanding health issues I've been dealing with, that also deteriorated
+because of the pandemic.
+
+After some time practicing yoga and taking care of my body, I feel much better
+in general, even if my issues are still there, at least they are not aggravated
+by the bad posture and the physical stress that working in a computer can
+provoke. So, if you are open to a suggestion: stretch, make some strength
+exercises and try to keep your body on shape, specially if you work in an
+office or any other kind of sedentary work that makes use of repetitive
+movements like using a mouse or typing in a keyboard.
+
+##### December
+
+As I mentioned, our work with ElenQ Publishing was done at the beginning of
+December. We approached that as a chance to stop and think.
+
+During the last three years I had few chances to focus on an specific subject
+for a long time, I had to quickly jump from one thing to another, in order to
+be able to reach all the projects we had.
+
+I was frustrated because of that. I'm easily distracted and it's hard for me to
+pay attention for a while to the same thing but I really like to understand
+things **deeply**, those who know me or that attended to my courses know it,
+and my everyday life, full of stress and various stimulus, was making me unable
+to concentrate.
+
+I had moments of attention and clearness of mind during  the pandemic (and due
+to the pandemic) that made me feel in peace so I wanted to feel that kind of
+frustration-less live on purpose, not only when things come like that.
+
+So that's what I did. I just needed something to investigate, something I was
+interested since the early beginning of my career: programming languages.
+
+I collected some books on compiler implementation and started reading them,
+then I realized I was interested on operating system implementation so I read
+about that too. Both things need to run somewhere so I also spent some time
+digging on various architectures and their instruction sets, and so on.
+
+I started developing a simple [Scheme
+implementation](https://github.com/ekaitz-zarraga/blas) (only started, not
+finished or anything) that served as an excuse to have a goal in mind in the
+process. Also, I decided to [live stream](https://twitch.tv/ekaitzza) my
+research process so I could share my findings with others and let them provide
+me some thoughts and help me go slowly, paying attention to the interesting
+details.
+
+And let me tell you compiler implementation is often a difficult subject for
+me, specially the theory, because my background is lacking some of the concepts
+that Computer Science students have but I have to study from scratch[^note].
+
+Having the chance to tackle a difficult long term task helped me forget and not
+worry about the *bad* year we had as a company, in which we only had actual
+paid work during the first half of the year.  I was just grateful to be able to
+sustain myself enough time to have the chance to breathe and spend more time
+with myself, doing something I don't always have the chance to do, regardless
+of everything we, individually and collectively, were going through.
+
+I hope you had some moments of relief too.
+
+
+##### What I learned
+
+I obviously learned many things during the year (books have been read!) But I
+don't want to focus on that.
+
+Sometimes the most important thing is not the goal, but the process. You learn
+more from the travel than from the arrival, right?
+
+I like to think that I learned to care more about myself in 2020. I'm still
+sick, and my recovery got stuck as I was literally stuck at home, but that's
+just a temporary issue, because I'm taking care of myself. Maybe not everyday,
+but almost everyday I take care of myself. That's what counts.
+
+2020 taught me how to make a publishing house. That's some important piece of
+knowledge, but I consider more valuable to reclaim my time and my attention.
+That taught me an important lesson by itself and it also served me to learn
+about myself.
+
+I learned that I was feeling alone in my interests. I had no one to share my
+interests with. I know it is surprising to you, but basically nobody is
+interested on how do garbage collectors, processors or anything like that work.
+Most of the people don't even care about what they are. Crazy huh?
+
+Sharing my findings, my research and my errors with other people makes me feel
+better. I feel someone is there, on the other side. It helps me avoid
+the frustration and the lack of motivation I have been feeling during the last
+years.
+
+The streaming helped with that[^english]: I had people reacting instantly, some
+sent me papers to read, ideas, and others proposed me interesting things to do.
+That feels good. It helped me remember that I'm not alone.
+
+If 2020 had taught me anything is that I, or we, need others to feel better.
+We need to take care of people[^people], because life is much better with them.
+
+On top of many things, being conscious that I was researching **deep** opened
+the door to apply that deepness in my everyday life more often. Not that I
+wasn't doing that before, those who know me are aware that I'm kind of an
+intense guy, but that I'm more conscious about it and I can selectively choose
+to go deeper about my thoughts and feelings.
+
+This time for myself remind me how intense I was back then and how I enjoyed
+being a dedicated person.
+
+
+
+#### So what
+
+As I said, in a company level I decided to use that time to arrange a new
+strategy. I wouldn't say I changed it that much, because I was in peace when it
+was developed, almost 4 years ago, but it let me rethink it taking in account
+my professional and personal experience in the recent years.
+
+Collaborating on free software projects has shown me that I feel comfortable
+with larger codebases and more complex concepts that were too much for me in
+the past. Now I feel more confident about that.
+
+Of course, this came with practice and time, but also after years of stressful
+work and random research that is not really fulfilling. I don't mean that you
+need to spend time on that to be able to tackle bigger projects. I mean that my
+past is part of what I am now, and even the bad times can help forge a better
+future.
+
+I decided to keep researching the way I was, because it's something that makes
+me feel good, and work more slowly, but paying attention to the details as I
+like to do.
+
+I'll try to share more about my work, in a technical and a personal level. I'll
+keep streaming for some time, and I'll try to use this blog more, as I was in
+the past.
+
+So, as I was saying, all this year helped me remember about important things,
+and forget a little bit about urgent things.
+
+> "Instead of swimming fast trying to reach as far as I could, pumping my
+> blood, splashing water around and having to take a short breath between each
+> arm stroke, now I want to dive. I'm far enough from the coast, already.
+> 
+> I want to stay in the surface until I'm ready, having some rest and breathing
+> as much as I want, and then, I'll dive.  I'll discover the colors of the
+> coral reef, the sea creatures and even the deepest darkness if I feel like
+> it. When I'm done or I'm tired, I'll go back to the surface, take a deep
+> breath and have some rest, feeling the sun in my face, until the next
+> immersion.
+> 
+> I'm not going anywhere. I'm not in a hurry anymore."
+
+
+[^note]: But hey, I'm much more comfortable with low level stuff like ISAs and
+  all that. My degree is not useless after all. 
+
+[^blog]: In this blog, as contrast, I can't really know how many people reads
+  or interacts with what I write. So I encourage you to contact me and share
+  ideas!
+
+[^english]: Making the videos also helped me to feel more confident about my
+  English (people understand what I say!) and that is helping me tackle larger
+  projects that involve people from different places.
+
+[^people]: More now, that we have some heavy shit going on out there.