My 2017: Achievements and Failures – My introduction to steemit as well.

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Hello Steemit, this is my first post on Steemit, and I'm excited to be here. 😃 I'll be doing a brief introduction on myself on this post and as well participate in a contest. How about that?! 😎

My name is James, friends call me Ub, and you can too. I am Nigerian, a music lover, a sports person who enjoys lawn tennis, a fitness bully – in a way, a sound engineer and an undergraduate student in southern Nigeria.

My hobbies to mention a few, includes surfing the internet, fixing stuff, gaming and reading. I do enjoy sleeping too –if that counts.. 😜

Looking to learn and share what I could with the world, and as well meet a lot of really good people!
I guess that's enough about me already.. learn even more below.

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Now, onto the contest!

I don’t normally do a review of my year, at least i don't remember doing that before. but looking back on the quite interesting number of things I succeeded and failed at this year, and also as part of the #my2017 contest organized by @anomadsoul, I'll be opening up a little bit about myself, my successes and failures. I hope it would prove helpful or uplifting to someone put there. 😃

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Achievements.

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To me, achievements are personally relative to every individual. I've accomplished quite a lot this year and this isn’t in any order:

1. Sound engineering certificate.
   I think my most important achievement this year was when I finally got my hands on my very first certificate as a sound engineer. As a student, it hasn't been easy trying to balance my school work with the sound training program. At some point I had the thoughts of giving up on it, I barely had time. However, i managed to stick to it and finally succeeding, makes me very happy.

2. Learned quite a lot about mindfulness. I asked a friend of mine Samuel, to become my mindfulness teacher around june this year, and with a little guidance from him, I’ve been digging deeper into mindfulness practices. So far, It’s been quite the experience.

3. I joined a book club in my area this year.
   I had sought a broader knowledge on life apart from the normal engineering and math texts in school, and i discovered a book club that let's me travel the world in my room with just a few bucks. So far, i've gone on to read 4 interesting books. – I'm not sure I've ever finished a whole book earlier in my life.

4. Growth as a sportsman.
   This is also another area in which have benefited from this year, I had been a lover of tennis for years, with constant training and very little to show for it. However, this year I was selected to represent my school at the all university games in Nigeria and I was able to finish @3rd place in the men's singles. – The thrill!

5. This year, I also had the opportunity to work with a maintenance company that works for a telecommunications firm here in Nigeria and I was one of their best INDUSTRIAL TRAINING STUDENT(IT). Not really sure if it's because I was smart and intelligent. – I don't have the best of grades at school, but i've been commended for having a knack to fix things.

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Failures

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Actually, i consider these “failures” to be successes, in that i learned from them and enjoyed taking them on. I do try not to feel bad about failures, but it’s good to show you that I’m far from perfect, and like anyone else, I make mistakes.

Some of my failures this year include:

1. Haste and my inability to listen to advice: This year would have been the best for me if i had listened to my parents. earlier this year, I was introduced to a platform were you invest money and get 30% interest back within 30days. I didn't think too much about the risk. by the time i got to know what the word "ponzi" even meant, i had lost all my savings and school fees. Lol.
   I also do tend to have an outburst of anger at times. something i've never really gotten hang on.

2. Academic challenges:
   I did mention that I don't have the best of grades one could wish for in school. This year, i scored my lowest GPA in college yet, and i own that fault. I know i had issues with focus and finance which forced me to miss lots of lectures, assignment and test.

3. Eating healthy
   Even with my recent sport growth spurt, I don't think i've been consistent with the standard i really looked to set for myself this year on eating healthy. Some days, I'm eating right, the next, I'm a junkie. This scares me a bit as I sometimes wonder if it's negatively affecting my game and academics.

4. Failure at coding
   I started learning programming (Java, and Python) just at about the same time I took on sound engineering. To be frank, it just didn't come intuitive to me and i dropped it. Looking back now, i wish I hadn't. But who knows, right? maybe i’m going to focus on one at a time in 2018 to see if I can stick with them and get past the beginning stages.

The biggest things I learned:

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It’s easy to take on too much, because every idea sounds amazing.
and it gets painful having to simplify after you’ve taken on too much, but the alternative could be worse. yeah.

Growth is a gradual and continual process, and could get quite messy.

I've learned that flexibility is an amazing tool for dealing with all of this.

I've also learned to appreciate each moment as they pass and live as peaceful as possible with others.

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Above all, 2017 has been a great year for me with all of the mixed experiences and lessons. I do have lots of areas to experiment with in 2018, and that excites me.

So far i've been registered on steemit but haven't really gotten started with blogging on here. hopefully, this should help me break free of the inertia of starting.
However I have really enjoyed reading a few articles and as well meeting very few people on here too. It’s been one of the coolest things I've discovered this year, and has added more value and meaning to my life so far.

I will do my best here and i'd be glad to know that i could fit in somewhere.

Thank you. 🙂