How I’ve Decided to Make My 29th Year Extraordinary

I turned 29 last week and I shared on my socials a few days ago some of my reflections from the 9 years so far in my 20s, as well as my thoughts as I enter the final year in my 20s. I’ve heard several times that 29 is a transition year…you’re almost 30, it feels like you’re 30 already, and sometimes you forget that you are actually not yet 30. 

However, when I look back at 29 from the future, I’d want to see it differently. 

I would want to remember it as the year I relentlessly went after everything I have ever wanted. 

I usually set themes for my new age every time my birthday rolls around; and this year is not any different. For 29, the theme is to be shameless and insufferable. 

The motivation for this theme is that I have decided to boldly (aggressively) go after every single thing I desire. I have officially quit sitting around waiting for life’s tunes to play into my laps. I’m excited and equally terrified.

Absolutely terrified! 

But that’s the fun in life, I guess.

From the outside, people might look at me as a bold, driven person that achieves all her goals. However, over the years, I have watched myself adjust, due to different factors; set one less goal, tone down the success metric by 1%, and over time, I have sat more comfortably in my comfort zone and just kept up with routine. While it feels good, I’m not satisfied with the results, so I have decided to change that this year. 

I have been talking about changing things a lot in this article, but what does that look like practically? 

Previously, I left a lot of things to chance. Some might think I didn’t want it badly enough, and they may be right. I did what I had to do when I had to do it, but that extra push? A lot of the time, I didn’t bother with it. 

Slowly, I have reclaimed my strength and I have begun doing more. Now, I’m going to turbocharge that energy in this new year, focusing on 3 major areas:

1. Career: A lot has changed in the tech field since 2022 and AI is all everyone is talking about now. I had an awakening last year when I realized I wasn’t moving as fast as the industry was. I was struggling to keep up. And while I still feel that way sometimes, I’m in a much better place today. I’m actively taking steps to understand all the latest inventions, terminologies, advancements, and apply them too. This is something I plan to continue doing this new year. I will pace myself and try not to burn out, but I will also not stay isolated, keeping my head in the sands.
   
   I am also staying intentional about not just inheriting people’s thoughts, but also forming mine originally. I’m doing this by reading extensively, making sure I understand things in my own words, and framing my opinions, even though they might be contrarian.
2. Knowledge sharing: I’ve been committed to sharing my knowledge and my journey for almost 10 years now. However, in the last few years, I’ve dialed it down a notch. At first, I told myself I was busy, I didn’t have what to say, I was burned out from grad school, my job was time-consuming, there are so many people already sharing and there isn’t anything new to add. Dare I say, those were all just excuses.
   
   This new year, I am recommitting to sharing. Putting in extra effort to not just get out one article a month, but actually pass value, impact people, expand my knowledge and reach intentionally. I am also going to be trying new things. Over the years, I’ve grown, my life has changed, and things have evolved, so I have to give myself permission to do that as well in what I share. I would not be boxing myself; I will be allowing myself to explore, fail, learn, and thrive in everything.
3. Building projects: Following from my previous point, I have gone back to building. I really love to build things, even though I haven’t done much of that recently. I’m back to building. And as I build, I will share. As I’ve discussed in my last 3 articles, I’m working on an AI-powered personal decision support system, which I call, “What Do I Do?. I’m excited to apply AI and agentic engineering to help solve a problem I think about a lot. For the extra effort, I’m going to actually  ship this project. This is not just going to be one of my projects I build and keep on my local or in my GitHub repo, and maybe just write an article about. I want to put it out into the world, even if it’s to a closed group, to actually give it a try. This will also help me move from just building to learning more skills like GTM, selling, marketing, community building, getting real user feedback, live telemetry and logging, etc. 

I’m so excited, can you tell?? 

These are the 3 major areas I’m publicly committing to intentionally improving 10x in the last year of my 20s. I can’t wait to come back when I get to 30 and look back at how 29 went, by God’s grace.

Thank you 28, you were incredible! You laid the foundations and set me up for success.

Welcome 29, you’ll be an unrecognizable force!

Happy birthday to me!!!

Thank you for reading.

Aniekan.