Day 24 of writing every day.
Today is the first day of 2023 of Aikido practice at my dojo. Unfortunately I can’t make it on time and am left with only 30 minutes by the time I get to the dojo after work on my current assignment.
And I’m fine with that. I’ve accepted that there’s nothing I can do so long as I’m at this job, a position I know I’m being undervalued at and have no voice over the decisions that all get made for me.
Establishing changes that need to happen
Following with changing my habits, I’ve decided I’m going to put off gaming where I can for the time being. While playing games can be entertaining and stress relieving, it reaches a point where I find no return mentally and physically being in the same position any longer only ends up causing my neck and shoulders to ache. It’s an addiction if I engage in the activity longer than I find satisfying.
I’ve made up my mind on enrolling in a programming school. I’m still weighing the options available to see which school and career path seems the best and most viable for me both in terms of finding a well paying job that I will find at least some meaning in and will allow me to pursue Aikido with minimal obstruction.
Learning a new skill set isn’t going to be easy and will require time which I have only a limited amount of. I’ll also need to establish the habit of spending at least 2 hours a day studying but ideally 4 hours a day if I don’t want to squish everything into the weekend.
Information I need to check
As I’ve done and failed several times in the past, simply learning to code won’t do any good. I need to learn and understand what it is that programmers, developers, and engineers do to have a clear picture of what learning to code is used for.
Sure, learning to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can mean knowing how to make a website for example, but that’s all I’m left with. I have no clue on how that applies to getting the skills to find a job unless I have a hobby of just building websites for fun about anything until I learn tricks for making really professional quality sites.
I need to learn about what engineers and developers do to be able to get customers, such as the goods and services they provide or how work is done in teams. There are also different roles in the whole process of running things and I still need to get a grasp of how things in the front end vs. back end of development can change what language I need to learn and how work conditions can vary.
So far all I know is that I will likely need a minimum of 4 months training to get qualified for a job. I’ll need to have a portfolio to demonstrate my skills and show how I stand out compared to other candidates. And that I probably should avoid the infrastructure and cloud engineer route if I want to have a job that offers the possibility of flexibility to my needs.
I am a little insecure in how I feel things might go, but I’m looking forward to change and growth. My current job feels stale and I see no proactive intent from superiors to grow my potential and they seem quite comfortable with how things are without regard to how I feel.
All the more reason to get ready to look elsewhere this year to find what’s truly right for me.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 