2022 A Year to review

2022 was definitely the most crazy year of my life with the ups and downs I’ve faced throughout it. However, it was also the best year of my life. You might be asking why? Well let me tell you.

I started off the year with a new challenge and job opportunity at Surge. Andy Flisher the CTO (who was only at Surge for two weeks before he hired me) decided to take the risk and bring me onboard to complete all the WordPress work that the company had going on as they recently revamped their development team and didn’t have any WordPress developers left.

Starting this new position at Surge, I was very nervous as I wasn’t used to working in such a big agency. However, within the first week I felt right at home as everyone was so welcoming and easy to talk to. I was also very nervous to meet the director Mr David Porter but when I met him I instantly got a grasp of what a caring, hard-working and friendly boss he was, nothing is every to big or too small to go to him about and he is always there for you no matter what time of the day it is.

Within the first couple of months in Surge, I managed to get a couple projects which had been ongoing for a while completed so that was a massive win for the development team and Surge as it was one less project that needed to be worked on. Once I had got a decent chunk of the backlog completed it was then time for me to begin learning the new technologies and methods that Surge uses to offer better and more modern solutions to their clients.

Introducing Aero and Statamic

Aero is a powerful ecommerce platform designed with the evolving needs of today’s retailers in mind. Statamic is a powerful, highly scalable CMS built on Laravel. What do I think of these technologies? Although I haven’t had a massive amount of time to learn these technologies, from the time I have had to mess around, test and get used to them, I can see why Surge chose to use these technologies to better cater for their client needs and offer faster solutions which are future proofed.

I’m almost closing in on my 1 year anniversary at Surge and I can honestly say it’s been the best year of my career so far. I’ve learned so much about myself and how to be a better developer thanks to my amazing CTO and line manager Andy Flisher and my other colleague Jacob.  I can’t wait to see what the next years bring me at Surge.

Personal Life?

Where do I start with this one, A couple months into the year I started to struggle with my mental health which meant I had to take some time off work to get some extra support which Surge completely understood and supported me through and they still support me to this day by offering me the flexibility around my appointments with my mental health team. I’ve done a massive post on this on my LinkedIn which you can view here.

Once I had received the help from the professionals I then began to start to enjoy life and met my soulmate BobbieLeigh, ever since she came into my life I’ve just felt happier, healthier and on top of the world. In early December, I asked her to marry me and she said Yes!!!!! I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her and take each day as it comes with her by my side.

To summarise, this year has had many ups and many downs, but I can confidently say I am ending 2022 on a high and can’t wait to get stuck in and see what 2023 brings me.