OK, here it goes: I’m back. After 3 months of not knowing what to do with my life and how to climb out of the financial mess that I’m in, and seeing most things as black-and-white, I’m back to my passion. I want to prove to myself that I can build this and that the only things I really, really need are time and persistence, and I’ll let my passion lead the way.
The reason I stopped my input was, I think, essentially, impostor syndrome. Even though I continued to see silly but true programming memes where contrary to what everyone outside of the industry believes, googling everything is how a programmer gets through any block. It’s finding solutions by any means you can is what’s counts; there’s no such thing as perfection when it comes to coding - as everything can be written more DRY, updates to the tools used roll out every month or so, and you do want to keep up-to-date, and make your contributors’ life easier by switching to best, most efficient technologies out there.
I know that learning isn’t supposed to be easy, especially when it comes to something that’s counter-intuitive: because computers are human-built, and they only take up a tiny sliver of all of humanity’s history. When I really think of it, I am blessed to have this opportunity to even type on a keyboard like I am right now, and see letters pop on my screen instantaneously. Most kids these days take technology for granted, jumping from one upgrade to another, and I still remember how Nokia was the hype, that giant brick of a phone we couldn’t unglue our eyes from.
But I digress.
Impostor syndrome knocks at every developer’s door, I’m sure. It’s that time when a lot of people, including me, just give up, for whatever unjustifiable reasons. During my absence, I didn’t pick up any new hobbies, I didn’t discover any breath-taking revelations - honestly, I’ve been struggling to make a living. Honestly, I’ve been waking up every day, angry and upset throughout the day because I knew I was wasting my potential. It’s one of the saddest things in the world.
I owe it to myself to take advantage of my curious brain. Living in a fog with no significant need for decision-making (even though it’s easy, and safe!) is tedious, and pointless. Having nothing of personal value to contribute to is absolutely disappointing, at the end of the day. Being expandable because your job does not require any special skill is scary, and wasteful. When all your mental processes transform into worries if you’re going to afford this, or denying yourself services because you know you will hurt financially after this, so you’re stuck with what you have, and hope nothing bad happens to you… essentially with very little freedom. That’s frightening.
I don’t want the financial freedom to be my main motivation, but I can’t lie that it isn’t. On one hand, it is freedom from all that monetary stress, and on the other, it’s my potential - and grit. It’s the decisions I make, on a daily basis, that will get me to my end goal. It’s with small but firm steps that I will make progress. Not daydreaming about it. Not talking about it. Not taking a big step, and standing pretty much in the same place as before. Life, and coding, isn’t anything like that. If I don’t keep it moving, others surely will. I need to think about what I can bring to the table as a developer, specifically, - and start executing it.