& it was challenging indeed.
My mind hasn't been able to completely transition to rest mode because it is still surreal that I birthed an idea and with the help of amazing teammates make it into reality. I am ever so grateful.
Earlier this year, I was having an existential crisis yet again. Is software development really for me? Am I even smart enough for this? I was approaching my ninth month of unemployment and journey of coding and still have yet to land an entry level position to leverage my skills.
I didn't want to wave the white flag just yet. I was thinking about how my sisters went through nursing school and had their own moments of self doubts. I also kept reminding myself about how difficult it was to make the decision to quit my job for a fresh restart and I wanted to commit to this journey. Most of my twenties, I was all over the place and simply lost. For once, I feel like I have a true sense of direction.
Learning how to code required me to rewire my brain as if training for a marathon. I had to believe in myself that I could do something I never fathomed was ever possible while grieving my past identity of having a job I could document on my LinkedIn, producing events on the side, baking and having a social life. However, I was in a constant state of stress during the past couple of years and if not for my career, I had to make a change for my health. With this, I also sought out therapy for a few months to help me unpack the past decade of trauma I knew held me back from my potential.
I go off tangent. Moreover, to speak of in present terms, I am so grateful I persevered and made the initiative to join a hackathon by joinpathlight to really see if software engineering is truly what I want. It has been the best decision I made after seeking out therapy.
This past week, I learned how valuable it is to work on a team. One can read or watch many day in a life of software engineering videos all day but getting a true dose of how to work on a team IRL is something else.
It confirmed that, when I do land my first job, I'm never going to build a company from scratch. I will most likely read a bunch of code and try to find solutions from different angles how to solve the current problems at hand complimenting my skills with the other team members.
Patience and delivering communications appropriately is highly integral in finding a way to collaborate on making an idea come to life.
While working on the hackathon, I was able to manage my time better than when I was working independently. On Friday, I made it a point to try to find a solution to a problem in 30 - 60 min time frames and then ask for help. (This was something my mentor advised me to do in the early stages of my coding journey) but anxiety hindered me from doing so.
A lot of what I call the administrative tasks like folder organization, link formatting, adding layers to the code base so the images show properly are STILL part of the software engineering process. Especially when you're working on the backend.
Lastly, (for now) it taught me how fulfilling it was to have the tools to make an idea come to life. I was literally in happy tears when our project was deployed.
This entire week, I felt like I was back in my theatre days preparing for the first day of performing for the masses. A cocktail of anxiety and excitement consumed me all week. A fusion coffee could not replace. I was excited each day to leverage the tools I had under my belt and also thrilled to do something I've never done before. In theatre, that would be performing what I had memorized on the script but being okay to improvise if I missed a line or two.
We had a goal and this goal had to at least meet the minimum viable product by 5 pm PST and that we did.
HUGE thank you to Steve, Jonathan and Karthik. I really felt like I was part of a rocket launch this morning. I have never deployed a web app that fast in the past nine months. Thank you thank you thank you for all your help in helping me grow. If coding had a Tony Awards, I would definitely include ya'll in my speech like I am including you in this little blurb.
I'm going to indulge in some ice cream and Netflix now. Happy Sunday!