A Developers Journey

I’m organised as fuck. Like, psychotically OCD organised. I keep a tidy schedule weeks and even months in advance and whatever I can do now to save time later will only make me even more efficient.

Although that might seem pretty intense, I have years of experience behind me in planning, organising and managing unforeseeable circumstances. So, if something suddenly comes up or I need to change plans at the last minute I can rework my schedule to make things fit. It’s an absolute pain in the ass and I hate when it happens purely for the fact that other people are not organised in the slightest but I can always make it work and I look at my schedule at least 4 times a day.

Being organised, believe it or not, frees up extra time in a week that you wouldn’t even know you had. I’ve kind of taken it to the extreme with not only pre-planned meals and exercises schedules but also study plans, a project schedule, pre-planned daily attire and holidays/weekends away. To achieve this, I simply focus half a day every week on planning for the following week. I plan everything, down to the time I will eat during each day while taking into account scheduled meetings, appointments, events and training times.

I’ve learned what’s reasonable to expect of myself and now know what I simply won’t do, even if I was to put it on the schedule. The entire of purpose, of what may seem like a mundane, extremely over the top regimented lifestyle is pure and simple and can be summed up in one word. SUCCESS.

I have no desire in life other than to succeed. Success is relative and can be measured only by an individual’s perception of what it means. For me, success is achieving the small victories along the way to getting where I ultimately want to be. I have a few large, long-term goals which I will one day meet and as a realist, I know that the only way to make that happen is through accomplishing a series of small goals along the way. The goals I set for myself ultimately all reflect the bigger picture I see for my future and every little accomplishment gives me a sense of achievement which drives me to push harder.

After all, what is life without goals? If you’ve no intentions to go anywhere why bother waking up every day? No one can truly say that they are genuinely happy with what they have and there’s nothing more in life that they want. It’s just not humanly possibly. We are genetically wired to always want more, or at least want what out neighbour has that we do not.

The only difference between people who know they’re not happy with what they’ve got and people who can’t see that they’re not happy with what they’ve got is drive. And the fact is, some people are more driven than others. Although, in saying that of course, there’s also one other factor that must be taken into account – priorities.

Everyone places life values in a different order and there is no right or wrong way to do this. There are simply smarter ways, depending on your thought process of course. Some people cannot separate emotion from logic and everyone at some point will encounter an incident or situation where emotion completely takes control and logic is left at the door. A logical thinker will quickly rationalise what just happened, break it down and surmise a potential method to mitigate or at least alleviate any future possibilities of a reoccurrence. It is far more likely that a non-rational thinker will fail to evaluate emotional pain or displeasure and thus be subjected to long-term repeating incidences, whether it be the same or only similar circumstances.

The obvious downside of being an extremist logical thinker is that you are trapped. Forever over analysing any and every encounter you have with another human being, every failure or success you face in life and anything that forces you to question, why? On the other hand, an extremist non-rational thinker will never see reason or logic and will make all life decisions based purely on their own emotional state in the instance the need for a decision presents itself. So which end of the spectrum do you sit?

Now that I’ve cleared up a little more about logical thinking, maybe you can see that I’m not quite as insane as an organised person might appear to be. I have simply optimised my time and ultimately my efficiency in order to meet my goals. Achieving goals makes me happy and being organised helps me achieve them.

And don’t get me wrong, I still manage to find time to socialise with friends and I still party harder than most of them too!!

Anyone who has kept up or even occasionally chimed in, with my blog may have noticed a few changes over the short time that it’s been around. I have always used the blog itself as a tool to test out new and interesting areas of web development and the changes that some of you might observe are a direct result of that testing. I have gained a number of skills over the last 6 months which are now beginning to reflect in my designs and development process. Here is an overview of the process thus far, the key focus for each build, an insight into my thought process and what I have learned as a result of my decisions and developing the way that I did.

Version 1 - Launched 05 August 2015

WordPress hosted blog at wordpress.selenasmall.com with limited customizability. This was way back when I just needed a blog and I didn’t really have a clue about how to go about getting one so it made sense just to use an available well-known platform. The writing went well and I got a few followers but I did not like the way my blog sat and I really struggled to make it flow the way I wanted. I also had to give wordpress control of my domain. This version was soley focussed on getting a blog together to start writing.

Version 2 - Launched 12 December 2015

WordPress generic theme hosted on AWS allowing more control with ssh access to a private server. This was when I didn’t really care so much about building a site so much as when I was trying to learn about servers, network routing and domain management. This was really just me taking an existing blog from the wordpress platform and recreating it on an EC2 server hosted with AWS. At this point, I learned a great deal about DNS management and routed my domain with Amazon’s Route 53 to blog.selenasmall.com

Version 2.1 - Launched 30 December 2015

With my new site up and running, this is when I started to play around with CSS, layouts and try to understand how a wordpress site works. I successfully modified the generic theme in some small ways and learnt a great deal about plugins and APIs such as how to set up and use the Twitter API and embedded posts.

Version 3 - Launched 12 January 2016

Customising an existing wordpress theme allows greater flexibility to make changes from source but still messy as fuck to try and figure out what goes where. Having learned about DNS and understanding a little bit more about things work on the server side I decided it was time to update the blog itself since it was looking quite ugly. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the context here to be able to build from scratch so I made my best attempt at modifying a theme and spent a great deal of time practicing my CSS skills with a particular focus on media queries for responsive design.

The fuck up

This attempt ultimately resulted in cramming the site with plugins to get the things I wanted to try out working. In doing so, web performance was not looking so good. More than that, the page did not load correctly as I’d tried a foetal attempt to improve that web performance by using yet another plugin which did not cache the CSS and forced it load after the rest of the page from the footer. You live and you learn…

Version 4 - Launched 22 April 2016

Today’s version still uses the wordpress framework but this time around a completely custom theme built from scratch which means fewer plugins are required. By far the best build to date. This time around I took responsive design into account significantly more and focussed largely on all round efficient code. I took the build as an opportunity to also practice semantic HTML and show off my abilities with skills that I’ve picked up there. The theme itself is clean, no code is written twice and each small file is filled with annotations. There would be no confusion when it comes to future modifications for anyone that was to look at it. There are fewer plugins requires for this theme to work the way I want and I’ve tried to stay away from the user interface as much as possible. The plugins that have been used include Posts in Page which is an awesome easy to use plugin (once you work out where to put the code to trim trailing white space and characters in the plugin’s source file) for embedding specific post categories in specific locations throughout your site and provides short codes that can be written directly into the source.

Custom Templates

With a better understanding of the framework itself, I was able this time round to even build and use custom template pages throughout the design with specified post categories featuring on individual pages or templates.

Performance

By using this theme, the entire site has improved in terms of speed performance scoring ⁷⁰⁄₁₀₀ for mobile above ⁸⁰⁄₁₀₀ points for desktop as well as a score of ¹⁰⁰⁄₁₀₀ for User Experience. There are always a few remaining performance improvements that can be made as, just like design and development evolves, so does the web.

The most helpful resource I found for getting a custom theme up and running is https://www.taniarascia.com/developing-a-wordpress-theme-from-scratch/ This tutorial actually explains in plain English with examples, which files are required and why as well as how wordpress overrides theme files. So if you’re interested in building better, cleaner themes, check it out!

Version 5

WordPress was only ever meant to be a playground enabling me to focus my attention on refining other skills and it has served it’s purpose well. I am now more competent than ever with CSS, HTML, DNS Management and Web Hosting.

As I have also been learning the Symfony framework over the recent months, WordPress managed to serve it’s learning purpose yet again, exposing me to a better understanding of php too. The learning never stops, so look out in the near future for a completely custom user interface application and a brand new site to go with it.

If you look for the right opportunities WordPress can make for a great start point but it should absolutely NEVER be an end point.

If I don’t have time to wax my legs, I certainly don’t have time to date you.

More importantly, if we have nothing in common don’t think for a second that you’ll be getting an inch of my time.

Well, that sounds a bit ruthless and awfully snobby doesn’t it? But you what? The truth hurts. I don’t like to waste time, especially not my own. I also don’t particularly like the idea of someone watching me eat or one on one time when I have to make conversation with someone whom I’ve got nothing in common.

I also don’t like guys who have to ask me out to dinner over social media or some 3rd part platform other than directly to my face. To be fair, that generally doesn’t go so well either. I usually laugh it off, make some sarcastic remark or get awkward and kind of walk away. Haha

Also, if I was to go on date – which I probably never will because I never really have and I don’t like to put myself in awkward situations – I probably wouldn’t be getting “taken out to dinner.” I mean, I love to eat but I work in hospitality and getting taken out to dinner isn’t as exciting as for me one might think.

I’m more than capable of taking myself out to dinner and I regularly do, with friends. Thanks.

Of course, this is all just hypothetical because as I’ve previously made very clear, time for building romantic relationships is very low on the priority list.

If you want to spend time with me, I’ll see you at the gym or at some nerdy meet up. Cause if neither of those are of interest to you, I’m terribly sorry but you already lucked out. My time is limited as it is, I can barely even find time to wax my legs on the odd occasion that I look down and see how much they’ve overgrown. My tattooist can attest to this, I’m pretty confident that in the last 6 sessions I’ve had on my leg over the past 18 months he’s had to shave my legs at least 5 times. Most recently followed by the comment “How are you ever going to get laid with legs like that?!”

Good thing that’s not something I’m looking for, eh? 😉

The thing about trying to get to know an independent woman on a mission in life to be successful is that she just that. Independent and on a mission and will not tolerate anyone or anything getting in the way. So if you aren’t prepared to deal with a somewhat self centred individual who refuses to be kept waiting but will most likely always be at least 20 minutes late, then you probably need to rethink the type of woman you’re going for.

If you can’t tick the boxes on these two general key steps of getting to know a woman you may think you are interested in, then you are simply wasting everyones time.

• Have something in common. And don’t just pretend to have something in common, this needs to be a genuine interest or passion that you both share otherwise it will never work. Your true motive will soon show through and I guess depending on the type woman it that you’re interested in, she’s not actually that stupid to fall for your foetal attempts at manipulation. Which by the way ladies, is never a good way to start out a potential relationship.
  

• Consider her lifestyle and where she is heading. You don’t necessarily have to want the same things or be at the same place in your lives but are you both really motivated people? Are you similarly ambitious? Do you both like the idea of travel? Do you both, God forbid, dream of getting married, having 1.5 children and living in a caldesac with a white picket fence? You kind of want to be heading towards a similar end goal, here.

I believe that there is no one soul mate. There are different optimum companions depending on where you’re at in your life. And that everyone with whom you cross paths may cross your path more than once. There is chance that someone you have encountered, inadvertidly met or already had extensive relations with will come back into your life in the future. Or maybe not.

Maybe you were both in the same place at the same time once, drifted apart and will later reconnect with a new commonality.

That’s the ideal relationship. Two people who’ve experienced life the way they wanted, on their own terms, gotten to know themselves and what they like in life, joined together with a common interest or passion.

I guess that’s why I’m not interested in a relationship, I don’t feel like I’m in that place or that I’ve met the right match for me. I am, however, finally starting to meet the right sort of people. And progressively learning about what it is in life that I do and do not like. Where it is that I want to go and what it is that I want to do. It’s really only in the last two years that I’ve become confident enough to give things that I’ve always to try a go.

It’s almost like I’m uncommitted to another individual at the most ideal time that I could be, if I’d been locked into a serious relationship I don’t think it would have been with the right person and I don’t think I would be making the progress that I am.

Sounds kind of selfish but I’m quite enjoying getting know me and I think it’s something everyone should do.

I will not be objectified by any other illusion than that which I have contrived for your narrow mind to indulge in.

Talk about a psychological mind fuck. It’s a test. It separates the pigs from the genuine. It shows people for what they really are and it’s a quick way to whittle down the crowd and determine who you’re not going to waste your time with. It also shows you how people with minimal perceived ‘power’ or ‘control’ or who consider themselves to be of greater value than others treat the people around them. If you’re on the receiving end, yet you intended to be there all along you may find that you are in fact the one in control. And that’s where the fun begins.

You see, when someone believes that they have all the control in any given situation and that you are too simple minded to understand even the word perception, let alone the impact that can have on human interactions, that someone can quickly find them self on the back foot.

The observation of human interactions based on first encounters through visual manipulation, generally using myself as the target object makes for a fascinating experiment. It’s potentially a little bit twisted to mess with minds the way I often do but I guarantee that most people can relate one way or another. Humans by nature are enthralled by their neighbour’s behaviour.

Just because you can’t look past a Porsches lush shiny exterior to see that there are in fact 7 layers of paint on top on an entire chassis which securely holds onto a customised engine made of small parts intricately and carefully engineered to produce the machine that you want to be seen riding in, does not mean that the Porsche is of any less value. And if you can’t look deeper than the facade that’s your problem, not the Porsche’s.

“Don’t ever judge a book by its cover.”

Surprisingly it’s not necessarily the new generation who are so quick to judge. That’s to be expected though I guess, the generation gap is growing and later in life people have a tendency to become settled in their ways, having formed strong opinions through their own lives, based on peer consensus and societal monuments of their time about what they consider things should be like and how they believe people ought to behave. They’re essentially stuck in a mindset, one in particular that young, single, well-dressed, career driven women are exactly that because there is either something wrong with them and they cannot attract a male suitor or that they are out on the prowl.

I love fashion, I love to look good and to be the centre of attention. I like to make heads turn when I walk into a room, who doesn’t like to be noticed and to feel important?

The problem is I’m incredibly shy and self-conscious at the best of times and also experience some mild anxiety when having to open up and talk to new people. I often stand there, nervously speaking as my voice breaks and crackles, wondering if I’m saying the right thing with a million thoughts rushing through my mind. Do they like me? Am I boring? What are they thinking? How should I behave? When should I walk away? I don’t want to be annoying, am I annoying them?

I never like to be the one to approach people but you want to be remembered and you want to be known, how do you get around that? Well, I have absolutely no problem talking to people who approach me. It makes feel accepted and that I am interesting and that I am somewhat important.

So, how? In a room of strong personalities can you guarantee that you’ll be approached? You need to make an impression and if you stand out from the crowd, whether it be a good way or a bad way, people will remember you (not that you generally want to be remembered in a bad way).

It has become apparent that in new groups or secluded circumstances I have unlocked the ability to make an impression such that I stand out enough from the group that some will soon approach me for a conversation. I am not sure yet what it is that gives such an impression, I guess if I knew that I’d be far more successful in social situations.

Social awkward doesn’t stop after first encounters, though. My mind doesn’t just stop thinking all of sudden about the impression I’m giving off and the perception that’s being received – unless there is a glass or two of wine involved of course. But you can’t just be drunk when you meet new people all the time. To overcome the anxiety you need to be confident, find out what it is that makes you tick and that makes you feel stronger as an individual. For me, I like to look good. Simple as that. And I know I can pull of fashion and outfits which others cannot. And I am not going to refrain from doing so simply because some do not approve or cannot see past the exterior.

There is often an assumption that simply because I smile or talk to a certain person or people that I am doing it because I am up for something more. Yet people wonder why I often don’t smile or bother to try and mingle and tend to just wait and see who comes to me. I essentially cannot win and will be judged regardless of what actions I take or how I dress. So, fuck it. I will do what makes me feel good.

Surely it’s not still so unheard of that a single female in her late twenties who dresses well, takes care of her health and is concerned about body image and fashion is not just that because she’s always looking to score. Sexy does not equate to slut. And nor does 6-inch stilettos.

Rule of thumb, if you can walk in them, you can wear them.

I’m focussed, I know what I’m interested in and where I’m going and I sure as hell know my priorities. Just because you see a piece of meat, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing deeper that you simply haven’t engaged yet to see. And if you do see a piece of meat, that probably reflects on the sort of dog that you are.

When you have sex with someone for the first time, there are pretty much two options. It could be really crap in which case you’re not really bothered or it could be quite surprisingly really fucking good!

In the later case, well that can be a problem…. You see, if the sex is that good then you’re probably going to want to do it again. I guess that might not seem so bad, right?

Wrong.

If you have an obsessive personality, like I do, you just end up thinking about it all the time. This can be counter-productive if every time you sit down to work on a project or get things organised you wind up, actually on a tangent, day dreaming about cock.

Oh yeah, and you’re probably also going to spend a bit of time thinking about whether or not a second round is a future possibility. Do you just leave it and see what happens? Let him forget about you? Because I mean really, he’s already been there and nailed that. Maybe that was enough for him…

In a world where you’re trying to get ahead and you have a very tight schedule in order to do that, there isn’t really a whole lot of room for distractions like this.

Regardless of what anyone says, men and women all think about sex. More-so around the time when they’re having sex. You can’t escape it. Everyone has their own fantasy of what they’d like to do or try and of course when you’ve recently had good sex with someone, you tend to fantasise about them too.

So, what do you do about it?

Well, the solution is easy. Don’t ever have sex. Stay focussed on your goals and find flaws in every possible suitor so you can’t ever be distracted. Oh, and don’t socialise or drink or party or watch movies or listen to music or have any form of fun in your life.

Nah, but seriously. Just get it out of your system. Even if it’s a just a bit of fun that you’re after. Most guys would probably jump at that! And hey, if it works out well you could end up with a regular release when the tension builds up too much.

The only way to clear your mind and get back to being focussed is to take a little break and let your hair down.

Although in saying that, you still run the risk of further distractions or just generally really big problems. I don’t know about you but I don’t go around just scoping out any old random to release my tension. You kind of just want things to be easy, after all you’re not looking for anything serious.

There’s the potential problem #1. It takes two to tango and you absolutely cannot control another persons thoughts or feelings. In fact, sometimes you can’t even control your own. And when it’s someone you’re sort of friends with or someone who’s friends with you’re friends or someone you work with, which are probably the most likely scenarios, you run the even bigger risk of everything potentially backfiring and causing a gigantic mess.

Let’s face it, when your personal life gets messy it affects your professional life and the way you deal with all situations and encounters thereafter. So, when you’re in a critical part of your career change and you have a million things on your plate already, you have more than enough reasons to be overthinking this.

Now look, you can consider all the possible worst case scenarios but at the end of the day all it takes is one small reminder about how good the sex was and that you would quite like to do it again, and that it’s going to be a very difficult act for the next guy to follow, for you to throw all those concerns out the window and go back to day dreaming about rather unproductive topics.

See? What a mind fuck!

2016 was meant to be my year… So far, though it seems nothing has gone my way. In 3 months I’ve made 3 attempts and in 3 months I’ve just nearly made 3 accomplishments but not quite. It’s the end of March 2016 and I have nothing as yet to show for this years hard work.

How can you remain confident when you keep losing by 1 or 2 points, over and over? Am I unlucky? Or am I just not trying hard enough? Maybe I’m not cut out to be a programmer. Or a kick-boxer. Or any form of successful.

I had planned to attempt it all again, regardless of the outcomes so far. But maybe it’s just pointless. A person can only take so many failures without a win for so long before it all gets to be too much. I don’t know how much I can take. I’m not really used to repeatedly failing.

One thing I know for sure, though, is that so far, it has been far from an easy road. So, where to next? Take a break? That’ll get me nowhere.

Maybe I’ve got too many goals. I want to do too many things. Hard things, too. Not really, I really only want to do two things. It’s just that everything else gets in the way and I’m not in a position to focus fully on just those two things. And at the current rate of fail, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

I guess that’s the hardest part, not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe I need to reevaluate the way I make goals and the goals that I am making? I’m so uncertain. I just don’t know what to do now. I don’t know what to think.

I had every intention of sitting a certification that I’ve been studying for in a few weeks time but now I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. That could be the stick that breaks the camels back if it doesn’t work out. After making all this progress I can feel myself slowly drifting backwards.

I’m in such a negative space and I don’t know how to get out of it. I feel trapped. I feel alone. And I just wish I knew where to turn next. I feel like nothing really matters and there’s no point in trying at anything.

Well, that’s how I was feeling a few days ago but maybe I just a bit of a drama queen…

I’ve just realised something about 2016’s lack of success thus far, it’s not the end of the world. And it turns out that before I even realised, I’ve already starting making a second attempt all three of those things I failed in the first place. And you know what? In three months time, if I’ve failed again, I’ll probably make a third attempt too. I guess at the end of the day, I’m more determined to get somewhere than I am to accept defeat.

I’ve decided to change my approach, though. Having done it all once already, I now have an idea of what to expect. And sine I can’t very well do worse than fail, I can really only do better than I have already. And I suppose another point is that when I look at my “failings” thus far, they haven’t really been as bad as I’ve dramatised.

With or without success, I have finally found myself on a path towards the best friendships of my life. I’m finally engaging on a regular basis with like minded individuals and genuinely interesting people who share similar interests. I guess if I look at life that way, I am succeeding.

I’ve finally realised that the advice I’ve getting all along is the best advice I could receive. And regardless easily side tracked I know I can be, I just really need to focus on one thing at a time. I’m now going to make my best attempt at doing this. First thing’s first, I am going to become AWS certified. There is no if’s about it and there is no need to question myself. I am going to do it. Simple.

Along with that, tech applications round 2 has begun. Now, I’m not expecting a lot since I already know that most companies want experienced devs but I already have interviews lined up, so at least I can make more contacts. I’m also getting ready for a geeky weekend where I will hopefully meet even more interesting new people! Now that I know what sort of people I like talking to, it doesn’t seem so bad meeting new ones. I think I just need to embrace my awkward.

As far as training goes, I’m already relatively fit (or at least, I was last weekend) so I’ll keep training at a steady rate and look to get back in the ring in a couple of months. I’m pretty confident now that I can compete without it affecting the time I spend studying or socialising. Last time round, I kind of almost took it too seriously and was worried about losing weight. Now that I know it’s not so bad I think I can work with it.

In the meantime, though, I’m off on a trip to Melbourne for a week to relax. A mini holiday will do the trick to clear my head and give me a break. Plus, 5 hours flying time there and back will ensure I get through plenty of studying!

Having worked in a completely different career for the last 10 years and now slowly ageing in my late twenties with skills and experience somewhat irrelevant to entry level programming, I keep finding myself with a strong desire to be better, faster. To learn more, faster. I’m late to the party and I don’t quite have any completed projects to show for it. I keep starting new things, I want to have a wide base knowledge of many technologies. There’s so many good frameworks, platforms and languages that will be extremely beneficial for me to learn. I kind of need to know them all. Like, 2 years ago.

When I started learning from my first mentor 3 years ago, I never thought things would go as far as they have. I’ve had many mentors since then and dabbled in a number of technologies but I haven’t actually completed a full, working application. I got close once. But when I look at that, with what I know now, I know it’s not quite right.

I have a never ending list of things I want to learn how to use and do, but it’s hard because I still can’t quite seem to see the whole picture yet. All the little bits, like necessary dependencies for web applications and figuring out how to use different package managers work and how they work with different frameworks and how to configure your new dependencies. When I look at examples now they make marginally more sense than they did and I’m slowly getting there. The main problem is that there are so many options! So many choices, and which is going to benefit my career most in the long run? There’s no way to know.

I kind of want to keep up with modern technologies, so I’ve gone down the path of learning Rails, Symfony2, AWS and now I’m trying to get my head around Hugo for generating static sites. Next on the hit list will be React, in theory that should be a good ground to get going and once I master those I can build better apps and smash out quick sites for individuals as a side-project to whatever I’m doing during the day at the time when I have enough confidence to go and do that.

The downside of sticking with modern technologies only, is that so many companies out there are still using older technologies as well. More modern languages are higher level and modern frameworks do a lot of the thinking for you as opposed to slightly lower level languages which essentially allow you to have more freedom.

I would love to give mobile app development a go, it seems awfully tricky and that’s a whole new area of programming for me to learn. That could actually take a few years. Learning Java so I can build android apps and knowing the differences between android, windows and iOS development.

That’s another point too, I’ve stuck with linux based systems and I have no idea how to use or even get started with .Net or ASP, not that I think I would want to after hearing what most people I know have to say about it… But still, being closed to that could close doors to opportunities and it is always good to learn about what people dislike so passionately so you can form your own opinion instead of just being told what to think. To be honest, anything Microsoft is probably the last thing I want to get involved right now.

You see all the things I keep thinking of? And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. That doesn’t go into the detail of all the journals and folders filled with ideas and plans I’ve constructed over the years. Ideas form significantly quicker than I can learn the requirements and actually execute them. Some of them end up completely over looked. I guess somewhere along the line, I’ll go back to them. But at the moment, the key thing is trying to stick to my 2016 plan of attack. So far, there have been a few minor hiccups which have set me back further than I expected I would be at this point. And every time something happens to set me back, I can’t help but hit the drawing board again to re-organise my schedule, re-think what it is that I need to accomplish and reconsider what my choices are. It’s hard. It’s like a never ending battle of not quite getting to where you want to be just yet. And the stuff that I’m trying to do is not exactly stuff you just walk in and learn overnight. Maybe if you had years of experience. But as I said earlier, I’m already late to the party. I’m competing directly with younger, more than likely brighter graduates who’ve spent their lives in front of computers.

The overwhelming need to complete a decent amount of working applications and quality websites across a number of frameworks is what drives me right now, and if I don’t work out a good formula soon it’s probably going to drive me insane. Everyone keeps telling me I’m trying to take on too much at once and maybe they’re right. But I just don’t see any way to get ahead by learning only one thing. And so many technologies tie together to get one app or site working in the first place – I guess when you look at it like that, building one really good application and getting it from dev to prod does actually teach you a lot of technologies at the same time. Hmmm… Maybe time for yet another reconsideration…

Another thing to think about more is realistic time frames. The timeframes I would like to be able to set aside to learn something new is not necessarily a realistic timeframe for doing so. I guess it’s hard to know how long it will take to learn something, and a lot of the things I want to be able to do don’t necessarily have any explicit online tutorials which you quite often don’t find out til the time. After starting something and getting it to nearly do what you want it to do 10 times and still not having it quite right forces you to spend more time than you wanted to on that particular aspect of your project. You quite often don’t realise it at the time because you’re so caught up in getting it to work but repeatedly getting caught like this quickly becomes irritating when you realise that a weeks gone by and you’re no closer to finished and all you keep going back to in your mind is that you’re running out of time, you left it too long to find your passion and if you don’t make enough progress soon you’re going to be 30 and still not doing what you want to be doing and by then you’re pretty much going to be dead already. Life is almost over.

You can see how I’m kind of stuck between a rock and hard place. On one hand I need to slow down and learn one thing at a time but on the other hand, time is running out and I need to learn everything at once, or preferably 10 years ago. This constant battle with myself is probably not going to let up any time soon and I haven’t quite worked out what to do about it yet. But I’m pretty sure that thinking about it all so much actually makes me less productive and slows me down even more. Hard not to think about though. I’m going to look for some groups where I can meet other people who are learning the technologies I’m interested in too. And, of course I’ll just keep wading through a mountain of ideas, technologies and try to narrow things down a bit.

What a roller coaster it has been… I have finally found the confidence in my own abilities to just go and put my name out there. Of course, I have had the help of a few good mentors pushing me in the right direction and giving me a little nudge when I really needed it.

Three years ago I didn’t own a computer, I hadn’t heard of Steve Jobs, and I would never have imagined being able to type commands directly into a machine using something called a Bash… But, well here I am. Most I’ve what I’ve really learned and been able to accomplish has been in the last six months since I’ve actually been building and playing with apps in production. Of course, that has generally been for interest’s sake in my free time rather than monetary gain. But it turns out that every little minuscule accomplishment adds to a person’s confidence and eventually, after enough tiny feats a person can, in fact, become confident enough in their own abilities to go out and pitch those abilities to complete strangers who may or not be interested in what those abilities can bring to them or where they can grow to.

I had every intention of quickly getting my name out there this year and making a mad dash for my new career but as the time drew nearer I found myself procrastinating more and more to the point where I almost wasn’t going to go ahead with it. Everything was ready to go, all I had to do was execute the final step. I guess I just didn’t want to deal with not succeeding… I had already not succeeded in the first thing I set out to accomplish this year and dealing with that alone was not easy, to say the least. After a firm push and some words of encouragement, I finally got my A into G and my CV out to 10 companies. I thought, wow, that should bring something back. I’ve put myself out there, I’m good to go. Well, two days later and still no reply… Maybe there are more places who could potentially be what I’m looking for and I just haven’t heard of them. Well, let me tell you in a day of searching I managed to find over 100 places in my immediate city who at least have development teams and they’ve all made it really easy for you to show your interest.

The first few responses were quick “No”s but that was to be expected, at least I didn’t have unrealistic expectations. And to be fair the first few no’s were for reasons like “We don’t have the capacity to take on any extra developers, we just have one developer” and “We are currently at capacity for Juniors but try back in a few months”, so they were quite well justified. Also, one of the early emails I received was from a Man who’s company cannot take on additional devs but who was very helpful in helping me get in touch with people who might have those sort of resources and he even retweeted me in assistance. Such generosity from a man I don’t even know put a smile on my face and gave me confidence that there are people out there willing to help and who may even be prepared to consider taking me on.

By the end of the second week, I was booked in for half a dozen interviews and coffees around the city. And well, if I wasn’t feeling confident before I definitely got a boost from that. Even more so when they all started lining me up for second interviews!

Three weeks in, numerous interviews later and I finally get my first offer! Well, it seems wise to have a little think and consult with mentors before snapping up the first thing that gets thrown my way. Also, I like to think that I can trust my gut instincts and after all the positive feedback I’m feeling quietly confident that at least one more offer should be on the way from a company more suited to my skills and interests… But let’s just wait and see.

It’s so frustrating, the interview process is long and drawn out, I guess no one wants to make hasty decisions and this is the real world now. This is how things actually work. But I just want to know! I wish I could skip ahead a couple of months and see what the outcome is. I’m feeling so impatient and to be honest a little tired from the juggling act of scheduling meetings and attempting to sell myself.

I have decided not to take the first offer. Before going into this, my initial plan was to just take the best offer. Even if there was only one offer and I didn’t particularly like it. At least, that way it would land me my first year of exposure in the industry and some experience is better than none, right? Well, that’s potentially wrong. After a lot of thought and various interviews, I have decided that I would rather not take the first offer, whether it’s the only offer I get or not. I’m not desperately in need of work so much as I am desperately in want of development opportunities and I need to think realistically about what sort of person I am. I know that if I don’t feel excited about something, I won’t put the same effort in as if I was. And since I’m excited about being a developer, I think it is really important that my first role is really exciting for me. I also think there would be significantly more value in finding a slightly larger team to work with.

Finally, after checking my inbox daily I have just received the message I was waiting for. My top pick from all the interviews and potential entry jobs just came back to me! Well, that two seconds of excitement was short lived. Now that I’ve got the email I wanted it’s time to be rational and think carefully about how I respond. The deal isn’t sealed until it’s sealed so, although things are looking positive, I’m not quite home yet. They’ve asked me for some additional information and of course, I want to ensure my response sounds reasonable so after a good bit of thinking, I responded by the end of the same day. Now, to see how reasonable it was…

So how long is it that you are supposed to wait to hear back from a potential employer that has just asked for your salary preference and some references? Well, I don’t know, to be honest. But I would like to hear back sooner rather later, the anticipation is killing me! It’s only been two days since I responded to their message but still, I can’t help but keep checking my inbox. I guess a week to check references would seem like a reasonable amount of time and I’m not exactly in a position to be pushy. I have had positive follow up from other potential employers but those aren’t the one place I’m really excited about hearing from so they don’t put my mind at ease. Although, it is good to know other options are out there if it all turns tits up.

Still no response… And I’m starting to worry. Oh wait, I spoke to my references over the weekend and they hadn’t yet been contacted so I guess there’s still hope. Unless they changed their mind and they’re not even going to bother with reference checks or call me back at all. Ohhh I hope I hear something in the next two days, even if it’s a “no”, I’ve come all this way and I’d rather just know, you know. I guess they’re probably busy… The company seems to have a lot going on in general and well, it’s not like it’s been a whole week yet. Just relax and be patient…

What if things don’t work out how I want? What if the interviews hadn’t gone as well as I’d thought? I might have turned down my only chance. I might not get offered up another opportunity to get some experience, and for what? The hopes of a potential other opportunity that I think is going to work out but actually hasn’t come back to me yet. I’m pretty sure if things don’t work out for me soon I am literally going to die.

I got it! I got a response back from the company I’d ideally like to work for and it’s still sounding positive! It’s not exactly what I was going for but in terms of making progress in the future, but this is definitely the best opportunity to get to where I want to be. Geez, after this much correspondence and time you’d think it’d be a done deal by now. I’m less excited at this point and just real tired, kind of reminds me of the lead up two weeks out from a competition when you’re absolutely knackered but you just have to keep going because crunch time is coming and then on the day all the excitement comes rushing back again! For now, though, at the rate we are going, it’s probably going to be another two or three weeks even before they make a decision on whether they’re even going to make an offer. Ohh, the whole process is so tedious. Uncertainty just frustrates me at the best of times and again I’m left wondering whether I made the right choice in turning down my first offer. A structured lifestyle needs deadlines to work towards otherwise everything seems to drag on and there is never any sense of accomplishment.

As expected, a response has come in from my future workplace of choice. Now for the reference checks! Wow, it has taken 6 weeks to get this far. What a process. But I guess it’s been good that I haven’t had to rush or miss any other opportunities along the way. In fact, I’ve managed to find and snap up some bonus opportunities which in theory will help me progress even faster! Let’s see…

So, my boss gave an over the phone reference and it sounds really positive but now the waiting game continues as I still haven’t heard back again. It some ways it’s good that things aren’t moving too fast and gives me time to make plans and think about things without rushing into anything, but in other ways, I really just want certainty of some specific details. And obviously, if for some reason they’ve changed their minds I would want to know that too so I can continue pursuing other avenues.

They came back to me! They changed their mind! And I’m trying my hardest right now not to cry! Maybe it’s time to give up… This was the best-suited role for me. It meant there was less pressure to be a great engineer straight off the back. It meant I could build up to a development role while utilizing skills I already have and join the dev team later with a better understanding of their customers needs. I’m fucking gutted and I’m fucking dark. This is what I was worried about, and my worries were correct.

I feel kind of trapped and this point, I’m never going to get my break. That’s all I wanted. One opportunity. One chance. And I didn’t even get that. After what feels like a lifetime of back and forth pissing around to get the response of “No, we’re not giving you a chance.” and turning down guaranteed offers I feel like I might as well just pack up my things and give up on trying to live life. There’s clearly nothing for me here. And after that response, I actually feel quite embarrassed. Seems like every time I’m about to succeed I fall flat on my face.

The people around me know how much I wanted this and have been so supportive since I received the bad news. I don’t know what I would do without them and in one afternoon I’ve switched back to logical thinking and I’m brain storming ways to move forward. I’ve been so focussed on finding work and training for my upcoming competition that I’ve just realized I haven’t actually been doing so much in the way of development. I think I need to resend my CV to all the places who had work coming up in 3 months time, 3 months ago but I’d like to have something new on there by now. A point of difference or a new project. I think the open source bugs I’ve started looking at will be a good project to include but I’ve literally only just started. Oh, and oddly yesterday someone contacted me about a potential start-up opportunity which I should really also pursue.

The first thing I’m going to do right now, though, is respond to the company who has just turned me down and try to better understand what their reasoning was. Maybe they thought I hadn’t considered what the job actually involves. It’s not specifically a development role, after all, I’d see it as more of an entry into tech while essentially still doing what I currently do. And the conversations had all been insanely positive. Maybe if I know why they changed their minds, I can persuade them to reconsider. If not then I guess no means, no. Whatever they come back it will be at least another week, so it’s pointless to dwell on the outcome now.