Explore

My 2022

Slava Melanko

Last edited 577 days ago by Slava Melanko

⁠

Intro

Hey there! Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. In this post, I’ll keep working on

the series of posts⁠

summing up my previous year.

Please understand that this is not about teaching, advising, or bragging. First and foremost, this summary is for my future self, and secondly, it’s a good way to learn English.

1. The full-scale war 🇺🇦

I woke up at about 5AM on February 24th, 2022 due to explosions and noticed a big glow of fire on the outskirts of the city. My first thought was, “No, it’s not possible!” and returned to my bed. I started to look over

Telegram⁠

groups to understand what it was. Despite having lots of contacts online, I found neither direct messages nor news. A few moments later, I started receiving frightening notifications and it was clear that the full-scale war had begun.

In fact, reading the news about the invasion, hearing others talk about it, and simply waiting were more terrifying than realizing that it’s a war.

The first morning of the invasion, I tried to live a normal life. I had a breakfast before an English class and later I went to a supermarket, but the lines kept me from making any purchases. They were excessively long, just like the lines at the ATMs. At home, I moved to the bathroom for safety reasons where I continuously watched the news.

I believe the

Kübler-Ross⁠

model exactly captures my next several months or so till I accepted new reality.

The following week, I spent the daytime with neighbors in a shelter (actually, it was a basement of the building). However, I stayed in my condo at night and, of course, more news.

I moved to Dnipro on the 9th day of the war and then to the west to work and donate to the

AFU⁠

(donations details will be later in this post). On May 6th, I returned back to Kharkiv and it looked like as is follows:

⁠

Kharkiv. May, 2022.

2. Became a patreon 💙

In January, I finished reading

"The How of Happiness"⁠

. The book motivated me to start practicing acts of kindness without hesitation. The easiest start for me was to make contributions to well-known Ukrainian creators through the Patreon platform. At the beginning, I picked independent journalists who revealed corrupt officials and their schemes. Later, I added a foundation that helps people with disabilities and orphaned children.

Total sum of contributions

Total sum of contributions

Creator

Total, $

Notes

⁠

Кнопки Харьков

⁠

Open

⁠

Bihus.Info

⁠

190

Open

⁠

Сергій Притула

⁠

298

Open

498

Open

There are no rows in this table

⁠

⁠

To be honest, I started testing out a bigger idea that stands behind contributions - giving makes people happy. Also, I can be a tiny part of something great... Something that would make this world a better place.

⁠

Someone might wonder why the hell I mentioned such “smart thoughts” if it’s only a few hundred dollars. I intended to contribute more, but

russians⁠

ruined all my plans. After quick adjustments, there was no place for Patreon anymore because of 2 reasons:

⁠

Patreon closed the largest Ukrainian account⁠

ran by the

Come Back Alive fund⁠

at the beginning of the invasion. This is a decisive factor for me. The first priority is military donations nowadays.

On Patreon, I started paying 20%

Value-Added Tax⁠

since October. Sorry, but I prefer tax-free methods.

As a result, I understand that

Monobank⁠

and

direct donations⁠

were more convenient ways to move forward.

3. Donations for Ukraine's defenders 💛

Frankly, I didn’t think of being a serviceman in the early days of the invasion. There is no doubt that military service is a real man's duty during a war. But damn, I don’t have such big balls. Instead, I can be useful from the “home” front by making regular military donations.

⁠

Since the second day of the war, I’ve been donating about $1K a month (excluding February). The majority of my donations were sent to trusted organizations and foundations. In total, around $10K in 2022. The distribution of funds is as follows:

⁠

⁠

⁠

Generated by the

Numbers⁠

app using my private data.

Hopefully, my donations saved some defenders’ lives and brought us closer to the victory.

BTW Ukraine was in the top 10 of the world’s most generous countries in 2022:

⁠

From the

World Giving Index 2022⁠

report.

Also, an interesting fact:

Ukraine is the only European country occupying a place in the top 10 ...

It’s good progress and I really look forward to see Ukraine in the top 5 next year.

4. Financial health 💰

A stable financial situation is one of the most important aspects of people’s lives. The first step to understand financial health is to look at income and expenses.

Income and most other exact numbers are not shown.

So, my expenses in 2022:

⁠

⁠

⁠

Generated by the

Numbers⁠

app using my private data.

The next step would be to take savings, debts, and investments into account when considering financial health. I’ve never had a debt and that’s the last thing I’d think of. Well, the most exciting thing for me is investing because it’s a good way to improve financial literacy. My investment portfolio changed throughout 2022 and is as follows:

⁠

Created on

Flourish⁠

Stocks & ETFs

In short, not a bad year for long-term investors.

⁠

⁠

My “performance” repost from

EXANTE⁠

Unfortunately, almost a year without any activities on the stock market because of the war. At the beginning of 2022, I bought a few stocks and sold

ATVI.NASDAQ⁠

completely. Currently, my portfolio looks like:

⁠

⁠

Two things I learned from 2022:

All stocks are red in my portfolio, whereas

ETF⁠

s are green (well, almost). I remember that all great investors said and continue to say that the best way to invest money is to put it in a cheap

S&P 500⁠

index fund. But I wanted to check my luck.

“When you lose your money, you lose nothing ...”. Peace time and health are main things to worry about.

Crypto

The year of

crypto winter⁠

without positive signs.

⁠

From

coin360.com⁠

On one hand, 2022 was marked by the collapse of the Terra stablecoin and the world’s second largest

crypto exchange bankruptcy⁠

. On the other hand, Ethereum 2.0 and that’s all [

source⁠

Nevertheless, I’ve bought a bit more of BTC. The last time I bought them was on March 13th, 2020.

⁠

From the “

Things are gonna get weird in 2023⁠

“.

Deposit and Bonds

Boring and nothing interesting. Good things that these two assets provide a predictable income stream. Theoretically they protect an investor's portfolio against losses during a crisis. Actually, they hardly even cover inflation.

As a result, my financial health score is:

⁠

My average score illustrated by

Flourish⁠

again.

5. Career and self-development 👨‍💻

There is an image that clearly illustrates my engineering activity throughout the year:

⁠

From my

GitHub⁠

profile.

Besides work, I finished 2 technical posts:

⁠

Continuing to talk about my free time, spent at least 180 hours on

Cambly⁠

and

Udemy⁠

because investing in myself is always the best investment. Or simply, my company reimbursed me for all these expenses.

Lastly, I have 9 years of experience and I like my job, but there is always a “but”. I don’t have enough time and energy to constantly learn new programming languages, libraries, tools, and etc. Actually, it’s not possible to keep up because technologies are evolving so fast. On the other hand, using old shit is not an option either IMHO.

⁠

I think it’s time to shift the focus to a specific technology stack and find my own niche.

Final Word

This year turned my life upside-down. The year when the war ruined all my plans, but not my goals. Now is not the time to give up; it’s time to move on, stay together, believe in the

AFU⁠

and help them.

Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!

⁠

"russian warship, go f*** yourself"⁠

⁠

Previous summaries

⁠

2018⁠

⁠

2019⁠

⁠

2020⁠

⁠

2021⁠

⁠

Intro

1. The full-scale war 🇺🇦

2. Became a patreon 💙

3. Donations for Ukraine's defenders 💛

4. Financial health 💰

5. Career and self-development 👨‍💻

Final Word

Previous summaries

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.