I just noticed that my last rewind was about 2016 so to keep some consistency here is a small summary of the last 3 years. It is scary and crazy to think that we are in 2020 already but looking back on the last years I can say that I have made a lot of mistakes but also learned a lot and hopefully grown to become a better person.
I started 2020 unemployed, living in a foreign country and sober since end of 2019. I am excited about starting a new job in February in a position very different from what I have been doing for past 5 years and I will be moving to Tallinn. Part of me is really sad because I am leaving behind many great people that I met in Lisbon and who I will miss. However, I know I can visit them and they will have a reason to come to Estonia. I am scared of starting again in a new city but calm as I know that I have friends there and at least I understand what people are talking around me.
Coming back to 2017. I did manage quite many of the things that I listed in my 2016 rewind post. For example, with the amazing team we shipped the TartuFic app which is now available on Android and iOS and founded MTÜ Kohalugu for this and future projects: http://www.kohalugu.edu.ee/
While participating in the UT Idealab Starter program and Digix incubation we understood that we prefer to make the idea come alive to get experience and contribute to preserving cultural heritage instead of trying to make a ton of money. So we opted to founding a NGO. During the first half-year of 2017 I gave more public speeches than ever before in my life. I even started feeling comfortable talking to a microphone and my voice started shaking a bit less when I needed to get up on the stage. The whole experience was tiring but really useful and rewarding. Learning and competing side by side with internally driven people who have ideas how to make a difference was amazing.
In autumn 2017, I started to work as a BI Analyst in Bigbank. During the 1,5 years I spent working there I developed so much as an analyst. I learned how to communicate with developers, data engineers and employees who don't know anything about data. I improved my technical skills of data querying and visualization by daily writing custom SQL queries, making visualizations in Tableau and explaining the results. I had an amazing manager who supported me with everything and wonderful motivated and skilled team around me. In the beginning, I struggled working in an open office as I had been working from home for 2 years but I got used to it - good headphones help a lot.
At the same time as I was focusing more on work my private life crumbled a bit and in the summer of 2018 I felt that I need to make a change. Luckily a friend of mine made me a great offer to join Pipedrive. As I was going through their website I discovered that they are looking for an analyst to Lisbon office as well and I asked if I could apply there. A month later, they told me that I could choose between Tartu and Lisbon and I chose Lisbon. The next few months I spent packing and saying goodbye to Estonia and my friends. I visited Lisbon for the first time in January 2019 for 3 days to look for apartments and get a feeling of my future home. I loved right away the colors, warmth and openness.
I wrote about my Portugal experience in more length in my previous post and about my work experience in Lisbon here. To wrap it up, 2019 was difficult but an amazing year. I met so many wonderful people who I would have never met in Estonia. I learned about different cultures, how to become friends even if we aren't fluent in any common language and don't share the same experiences. There were funny, sad and crazy moments. All together, it was incredible.
As one of my friends said: "Sometimes we need to go far away to understand what we really love." For me, this was the case with living in Portugal - I loved this experience but Lisbon is not my home. With my flight to Estonia in a week, I feel sad to leave this wonderful place and people behind but I feel happy going back.
At the same time as I was focusing more on work my private life crumbled a bit and in the summer of 2018 I felt that I need to make a change. Luckily a friend of mine made me a great offer to join Pipedrive. As I was going through their website I discovered that they are looking for an analyst to Lisbon office as well and I asked if I could apply there. A month later, they told me that I could choose between Tartu and Lisbon and I chose Lisbon. The next few months I spent packing and saying goodbye to Estonia and my friends. I visited Lisbon for the first time in January 2019 for 3 days to look for apartments and get a feeling of my future home. I loved right away the colors, warmth and openness.
I wrote about my Portugal experience in more length in my previous post and about my work experience in Lisbon here. To wrap it up, 2019 was difficult but an amazing year. I met so many wonderful people who I would have never met in Estonia. I learned about different cultures, how to become friends even if we aren't fluent in any common language and don't share the same experiences. There were funny, sad and crazy moments. All together, it was incredible.
As one of my friends said: "Sometimes we need to go far away to understand what we really love." For me, this was the case with living in Portugal - I loved this experience but Lisbon is not my home. With my flight to Estonia in a week, I feel sad to leave this wonderful place and people behind but I feel happy going back.
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| Morning in Madeira in Jan-2020. Photo by Olga. |
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