Looks like I’m technically now a Professional

October 2016 · 4 minute read

So apparently the disillusionment doesn’t stop just because you’re technically now a professional.

Like, apparently I can’t be doing too badly. I just got through my first ever 90 day trial period and I’m still employed.

Regardless I still find myself sitting here feeling lost and confused about how the fuck, shit works. I find myself back at square one questioning everything I thought I knew already and again reconsidering my abilities.

Of course, there’s always a massive likelihood that nothing I ever thought I knew was right at any point in time but let’s not get into semantics. Anything you think you know, you can only know as far as the extent of everything else you think you know already, relative to anything.

So anyway, significantly more experienced people than I have reassured me over and over that all developers go through this time and time again, throughout the entirety of their careers. And those same people, keep saying that they always get through, they come out the other side better off and more knowledgeable. Obviously being the pessimist that I am, I just assumed they were saying that to be nice. Looks like there may be some truth in it after all.

Low and behold, a couple of days after writing that ^ and things are magically making sense and working now. I still can’t pinpoint the exact moment that everything seems to fall into place. It’s almost like you go to sleep a mess one day and wake up the next with a firm knowledge of something you’ve never looked at before. Do you remember the scene where Neo has his first training in The Matrix, he goes under and looks like he’s having a seizure on the chair, all of a sudden he wakes up, takes a deep breath as if he just nearly drowned and exclaims “I know Kung Fu!” Well, this is kind of like that.

I spend a week or two of sleepless nights, tossing and turning in bed at night, tearing my hair out in front of a computer screen and on the verge of tears every 10 minutes until one day I wake up, sit in front of my computer and everything just works. I can not wait for the day that learning new tech is not a complete mind fuck.

Sure, it’s not as easy as I originally anticipated but now I’m leading myself to ask “Why do I keep setting myself up for disaster in assuming things are less complicated than they are?” I mean, obviously I’m a go getter and the only way to really get is actually “Go and get.” Because let’s be realistic, everything isn’t always going to be handed to you on a silver platter and having any inkling of an expectation that it will is only going to lead to disappointment.

So I guess overall this post is a bit of a pointless loop. After a bit of a lull – popping my shoulder out again in my last fight, feeling immensely inferior in the office and unable to crack a new language – it seems the order of the universe has been restored once again.

I’m now certified with an understanding of implementing relational data warehouses, I have a small working app written in jQuery, a solid leap on a new project written in pure JS, I’m back at the gym training for my last fight of the year and basically the next six months of my life has been pre-organised, planned and booked up with some pretty exciting trips and adventures.

I’m astounded how I can feel so down about things one minute and then the next, look back at what I’ve done since the last time that “things were bad” and suddenly feel content – I guess it looks like I’m doing kind of okay.