New year, new adventures, new challenges

So, this year started with a lot of firsts for me : Relocating to a different city and living and living on my own for the firs time, and visitng Germany. I wanted a change of places and faces and it happened that I got accepted in a program in Munich for building digital products -> Digital Product School (DPS). and since I was on a break after the last startup that I worked for discontinued the product we were working on for business decisions, I wanted to explore more before going for a new career decision. After gaining much experience in the work place from my former team and also realizing a little bit what I might enjoy for a career path and since I didn’t want to apply for new full-time jobs yet, I decided to go for the Digital Product School in Munich and explore Germany’s tech ecosystem besides what I was actually here for, which is learning about the full process of building a digital product. and here I am in Munich with new plans and goals for this upcoming 3 months.

When it came to moving to Germany, I had some stuff in plan on a personal level and also career-wise.

Goals

• Personal Level :

  Since I didn’t have a gap after graduating from college and starting my first job, I was drained and didn’t take care of myself physically and mentally, also I almost didn’t practice any hobbies except some sketching and trials with woodworking. And as we put resolutions for the new year and as I felt I would go to a new environment I should take some up some goals regarding myself which were

  • Fixing my Sleeping Pattern, not entirely because I know it’s hard for a person like me who’s a night owl, but at least get enough hours of sleep that won’t turn me into a zombie and also force myself to spend most of my active hours in the morning because everything closes in Munich by 8 P.M.

  • Living alone will give me more control over the flow of my day and more quiteness and space to focus on any goals.

  • Maintain a balance between work and also enjoy my time in Germany as much as possible and explore the city and all the neighbouring cities.

  • A step back, I wanted to distance myself a little bit from everything I have known and reflect on that, plus, meet new people and create new memories. specially that the people I will deal with are from different countries and cultures which is a refreshing perspective.

  • Document more. Since I always skipped some stuff while travelling or having new experiences. I was too lazy to take enough photos or videos to document an event or experience and sometimes I regret it because you can easily miss out on details and forget after a while. Our memory is not reliable.

  • Staying away as much as I could from social media and immerse myself in the moment.

  • I already wanted to travel and visit different countries. Germany was just one country on my list.

  • Most importantly, stop worrying about next steps, just go with the flow and make the most out of it.

  since these were goals, it means I didn’t practice them well enough before and I set it as a new challenge for myself, and to be honest, staying alone and also in a city which is not too loud and active as Munich has served my purpose.

• Career-related goals :

  • Learn how the process of building a product from scratch works like, not just handling the engineering part and getting requirments to fullfill engineering tasks. I appreciated that digital product school (I will use DPS for short later on) engaged all the team members from the different disciplines to learn about the whole process of product from identifying problem spaces, generating ideas and solutions, validating them and go for user interviews and prototyping from lo-fi with paper untill hi-fi working proof of concepts. I learned about Design Thinking, Interaction Design, User Testing, Agile Methodolgies.

  • I wanted to have a balance between what I work on at DPS and also my own personal studies, which were at that time covering iOS development which I picked because I wanted to build portable solutions and Machine Learning which is a passion I’m pursuiting besides software engineering and since I would be on my onw, I would be less distracted by family and friends.

  • Know more about the companies in Munich and Germany and maybe apply for some while being there because I was considering relocating (didn’t specify a country) but Germany was on the list as I had friends there and it wasn’t as restricted as the other countries regarding Visas (Even though I still hate the embassy for always giving me hard time -.-) and Germany’s tech scene is starting to flourish in Europe, so it was something worth checking.

  • Meet other experts or people who are building their knowledge and encourage each other. I wanted to get inspired.

While having all this in my head it was hard to prioritize because all of them were important and essential for me, and I was having high hopes in fullfilling most of them.

My first encounter with Munich was on new year’s day 11 P.M. at night. I reached Munich, everything was closed and it was a ghost town, I took the train and then bus to my studio where I will be staying for the next 3 month. It wasn’t the best experience, because my bag was heavy and I was still figuring my way. but I was rewarded when I reached my studio and found that it looked like the photos I found online and it had comfy vibes. I loved it from first sight.

After settling in the next day, I wanted to take a walk across Munich. I went out of my studio and just took the streets walking towards the city centre and did some grocery shopping on the way.

On my way, I passed by the Isar river and reached to Marienplatz through Tal street. I passed by a nice artwork gallery on my way and of course, being the active street that it is, it was alive and crowded with people streaming in and out of the popular shops of every brand. This was my first walk in Munich and the streets of this area will always have a special place in my memory, specially with their old architecture. The trip ended by me reaching the Theantine Church and having a break in Hofgarten.

While eating my snack and prioritizing the goals for the new year, I made peace with last year, most importantly stopped blaming myself for the stuff that I didn’t quite finish and acknowledged that I needed this break and a new room for exploration and meeting new people. It was time for a fresh start as the sunset at hofgarten with the bluish mauve sky started to sink in. It was enchanting and peaceful, just what I needed at this moment.

Decision has been made to give myself some room for learning and doing mistakes and not to worry too much about next steps at least for the upcoming three month and just go with the flow that this city and period holds for me. I appreciated the fact that I would do this on my own and away from everyone I knew, I needed solitude to handle this and be self-reliant and a new environment to break the comfort zone.

To be Continued…..