First blog post

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 Hello BlogLand,

This is my very first post. I am new to blogging, but not new to writing. I have always been an aspiring writer, who hopes to one day take the craft back up and publish a fictional novel. As mentioned in my blog description, I am currently on a long and arduous self and professional development journey. It has actually been ongoing, on of off, for the past 2 years. I haven't quite reached the results I was hoping for, but I honestly feel like 2024 is my year. 

You might ask, what exactly is a self and professional journey? Well, BlogLanders, it's a long story that started all the way back in 2020. Due to some personal difficulties, and of course the Corona, I decided at the age of 29 that I didn't like the person I was and I should finally do something about it. The first step was to try and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I had worked in Warehouse environments for the past 8 years, and it just wasn't enriching. It wasn't 'riching' at all actually, because the pay isn't that great. I've lived from paycheck to paycheck my entire adult life and picked up some bad money habits from my folks. I wanted to find a career, something that I was passionate about, that could fulfill me, and also provide financial security. I liked working with Excel and Macros at work, so I thought maybe I could do something in computers. I have never been very tech savvy, and didn't even own a computer until college, but being able to string some words together to create something that made people's lives better felt pretty great. So I took some Community College courses and earned an Associate degree in Computer and Information Systems. I would have loved to move on to a B.A., but money wasn't really on my side. During this time, I got a family. I started dating my significant other who had a 1 year old son. So time and money really prevented me from following a traditional route with school.

After my A.S., I enrolled in a Software Development Bootcamp. It didn't turn out to be what I hoped though. All of the information was so condensed, and between having a family with a small toddler, and having loads of course work, I couldn't really dedicate extra time to learning from outside sources. By the time I graduated from the Bootcamp, I felt like I knew absolutely nothing. They didn't give us a good grasp of the fundamentals, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I took a break for a few months and decided to continue my self taught journey by learning to code from tutorials. This path didn't work very well for me either, because I quickly found myself in tutorial hell. A place I would stay for the next year. I would finish course after random course, but still felt like I knew nothing. I also didn't have any projects or a portfolio to showcase my knowledge I finally broke away from the tutorials recently, which was a pretty hard thing to do. It's way easier to just watch videos and copy their code, versus having to build something on my own from scratch. I mean, what if I really wasn't smart or tech savvy enough to be make a career change to Web Development? There are so many other people out there with fancy degrees, more experience, and nice portfolios that I cannot compete with. Why would any company take a chance on me anyways?

Cue starting my journey into self development. I have read countless self-development books. Listened to podcasts. Watched YouTube video. I have failed many times to take up meditation, yoga, or tai chi. But I am still trying to make at least mindfulness a daily practice. All of this in an attempt to build up my confidence and play down my naturally anxious and fearful personality. So, sure I don't have a conventional degree or a tech background. Sure my knowledge and experience is currently lacking. But plenty of people have been in my exact shoes, and thought my exact thoughts. Despite everything that was against them, they kept going and trying, and eventually they made it. So why not me? I can either spend the rest of my life working in a dead end Warehouse job, barely making ends meet, or I can give this all that I got. I can put all my cards on the table and someday find a job with will let me play my hand. I don't have the experience or knowledge yet, but I genuinely love coding. With what knowledge I do have, I love watching things come together and create something pretty cool in my web browser.

So that is basically my rant for my first blog post. Just a little background story on my journey. A little motivational speech for myself thrown in. To borrow a quote from musician Helen Reddy and make it my own. She once sang, "I am woman, here me roar". Well, I am woman, watch me code.

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