WordPress portfolio is live

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        It's been a difficult couple of weeks. I feel like my day job has been mentally taxing and any free time that I have after work is spent on adult responsibilities and professional development. My brain doesn't get much of a break. I read this book The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod and it talks about how the majority of successful individuals have a morning routine that involves them waking up early and setting the day up to be productive. I've been trying to develop my own routine. I've set my alarm to wake up at least 30 minutes earlier so that I don't feel rushed. I'm also trying to incorporate a habit of reading a daily inspiration excerpt from a book, journaling in a gratitude notebook, and spending at least 10 minutes on mindfulness/self reflection. I've been making a fruit/vegetable smoothie for breakfast and working out most days. It's been difficult to keep up with the practice though. My small apartment doesn't really provide a quiet, distraction free environment. I've also been feeling under the weather this week, and haven't had much energy. Hopefully next week I'm able to pick back up the momentum though. If I can stick to the this habit, then I know it will make it easier to stick to developing other positive habits as well. The focus is on productivity.

    As for a professional level, no luck so far on hearing back from any jobs. I did finally finish updating my resume and my WordPress portfolio is basically complete. I started taking a Udemy course on creating custom templates in WordPress by manually coding HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript. I figured if I'm going to build websites in WordPress, then I should also be able to code customizations. The course is 46 hours long, and I'm barely 2 hours into it. It's interesting stuff that I'm enjoying, but I find that tutorials usually put me to sleep. If I'm coding on a project myself, times flies, but coding along side a tutorial feels like it drags out. The course has me building a fictional university, which I think would look really good on my portfolio. That means that I need to buckle down and focus more energy on completing the course as soon as possible.

    I also want to update my front-end portfolio, the one I built in HTML, CSS, and JS. I paid for the .com domain with my name on it, and I want to phase my entire portfolio over into the WP one I created. I will have a section for my WP built projects, as well as somewhere to showcase that I can code in HTML, CSS, and JS. On top of that, I have a few potential freelance jobs pending to build basic template websites in WP. One is for a landscaping business, and one for an artist's portfolio. I plan to continuously post about my progress on LinkedIn and Twitter to hopefully draw some professional interest.

    When I was taking my web development Bootcamp back in 2021, I had this teacher that I felt I could relate with. I believe he taught the React course. He didn't have a degree and came from a similar situation as me, where he was working multiple jobs to make ends meet and wanted better for himself and his family. He enrolled in a Bootcamp as well and had a job offer before he even finished it. Five years later he was a Senior Software Engineer making 150k and had multiple recruiters spamming his LinkedIn. His story inspired me, that I could make a career change into tech as well and within 5 years my life would look completely different on a professional and financial area. Well, I looked him up on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, and it seems that his life has since taken a complete 180. He was laid off from his job and now he and his family are basically homeless. It was pretty disheartening to read from his posts. I felt awful for his family was now in this situation, but it also heavily impacted my belief in myself. If this senior developer with all this experience was let go from a great job, then where's the hope for entry level developer like myself? 

    My SO said I shouldn't compare myself to others situation, that I should focus all of my attention onto my own journey. I just have to stay positive and keep learning and trying to grow. I have to believe that the right opportunity will present itself and that my work ethic will prove that I would be a valuable commodity for any workplace.

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