The Journey Of A Programmer

[Magdar]

Day 1: 25/01/2017, way too soon in the morning...

Hi,

First off, note that English is not my native language and I apologize in advice for any errors.

I'm a young men in my 20's who came to the bitter realization that most of my life up until now was wasted. I was never the social kind and I spent most of time at school not doing anything of value, just being moved by the flow. When I got my first professional experience as a software developer last year, I managed to deal with it quite well at first but things deteriorated quickly. The pressure, my lack of self confidence and the general state of the company at that time where pretty harmful to my happiness. As I was at my worst, one of the engineer took me under his wing and started to introduce me to self-development. I started reading books on the subject (The Slight Edge, Mastery, ...) and listening to motivational speeches. I realized with these books and videos that I needed to be responsible of my own growth and that depending on circumstances to be happy would only be harmful in the long run. I've been working on it for the past 7 months or so and have seen things change in my life for the better.

While I changed quite a lot, I need to take actions to increase these improvements and properly work on myself and my happiness. Too often do I end up quitting something I wanted to do and too many times do I find myself dreaming and expecting things to manifest themselves without me grinding up the skills needed.

I still haven't figured out a way to make consistent change on my life and this journal is just another one of my attempts at doing so. I believe I need to focus on improving the following parts of my life;

• my lack of social skills. I'm shy and almost never manage to feel comfortable when talking with others,
• my craft, programming. I haven't managed to finish a single one of my personal projects yet,
• my career a developer, mostly by getting a contract that let me grow my skills and allow me to finally settle on my own (I still live with my parents),
• find my purpose through exploration. I want to try out things and see where they will take me.

 

To that end, I will use this journal to keep each day catalogued and try to figure out ways to improve by forcing myself to make post-mortems of my activities. I have difficulties managing my own failures and tend to try to move on directly after one. Hopefully doing so in public daily will help me. The big picture of what I got for now goes something like this;

• I need to force myself to be with others outside of work. To do so I'm thinking of the following:
  • Hit the gym. It will allow me to work on my ability to be comfortable in an environment surrounded by people and stay focused on my task even with others around me. And working out will be a great plus, of course.
  • Start acting in a club. It's probably the most obvious way to fight my shyness; act in front of others. I'm quite curious to see where it will lead me.
• I need to work on a programming project for 1-3 month and set myself clear goals to work on. It will probably be in connection with video-games. I'm still not sure if it will have gameplay per say or just be about algorithms, but I would love being able to show something so it will need to have some visual and interactive aspect. For now, I think I will focus the first week at finding ways to generate maps that feat the purpose of the project.
• The course I follow end on the last day of February. Past that point, I will need to find a contract. I have jobs interviews, in the context of the course, with a dozen companies at the end of that month so I need to prepare for them and work on my look. Prepare my interviews, gather information about each company, go to the barber, find a suit, that sort of things.
• I need to start working my skills on areas other than programming. Right now here is what got my interest, there is no order nor deadlines for them:
  • calligraphy, being able to control my writing would be a nice experience I think
  • knitting; it's cold outside and it got me thinking than having a piece of clothing made by myself to keep me warm would be nice. I don't expect to have it for this winter, but I hope it will be here for the next
  • HEMA or Historical European Martial Art. Basicly the art of handling weapons based on historical manuals. One of my colleague practice it and I would love to try it out
  • cooking. I started doing it but stopped by lack of time. Would be great to do it again
  • A few subject of studies, not sure where to start with most of them through; philosophy, strategy, dating, theology

 

I will put my first actual entry up at the end of that day (it's 3 in the morning right now...).
Of course, while the main purpose is for self-criticism, you are more than welcome to participate. I'd love to read your comments !

[Magdar]

Day 1: 25/01/2017, the proper beginning

 

Today has been great despite a quite awful beginning. I fell asleep at 5:24 AM and only woke up at 8:14 AM. That meant delaying or completely cancelling a few of my activities for the morning. I still managed to meditate through, which is nice. I haven't been doing it for long but it seem to put me at peace and let me refocus. I got 15mins of meditation but was a little distracted, I guess I still need to figure out what position to use and how to stay focus. I've been doing sophrology sessions since a 5-6 months now and I guess it eased my way to meditation. I need to take advice from experienced people on how to better meditate and try things out for myself to make up my mind. I might try focusing on breathing exercises next time and see how it goes.

On the activity side of things, I managed to get an appointment with a barber (I still stumbled on a few of words during the conversation through) and sent an email to a theatre club near where I live. I also thought about going to a tabletop shop and try to join a group to play with. Not sure if I will be able to manage that yet, but it's definitely on my mind.

I also took a 1h long ride with my bike. Last time I did was 2 months ago, but at that point I was doing almost 2h a day to get to work and come back. It felt good to do it again and I realize I really love it. Despite the cold, I was enjoying my time and my mind was able to refocus. I did fine up until I came to some crowded areas, where I was most focused on my stress than anything else. I wouldn't say I'm agoraphobic considering I was never diagnosed so, but I truly understand what it feels like. I really need to be able to fearing others people that much, it's just biting me in the ass every day.

As far as my personal programming project goes, things are looking good for now. I managed to do what I wanted despite some bugs still showing up. I also lost too much time arguing with myself about how to organize things before coding per say. While there is nothing wrong with preparing things, the fact that things aren't organized after so much deliberations prove to me than I need to change my method. Maybe try structuring that kind of things by putting stuff on paper and imposing myself a deadline. I will have to think about that later. I seems to be on track for my deadlines, which is great.

 

On a positive note, I managed to give a speech during a meeting and from the feedback I got I did really well. I guess it came down to the fact that I was interested in the subject and wanted to share my thoughts correctly. I still think I had difficulties finishing my speech properly; I lost track of my final sentence and stumbled on my last words. I really need to manage to stop myself when I made my point and not keep talking until I lost my words. I might be hard on myself given the feedback I got from the others participants, but it's still hard for me to take positive feedback. A part of me still wants to believe that they are lying just to make me feel good. I can't prove that this statement is false, so it stay in my brain and make me take it with a grain of salt.

 

It's pretty much all for today.

Edited January 25, 2017 by Magdar

[Magdar]

Day 2: 26/01/2017, the proper fuck up.

 

Well, it was doomed to happen at some point, I fucked that day up big time. Didn't manage to get up at the time, didn't managed to do what I wanted to do before going out... I managed to meditate a little, but didn't really got much from it this time.

 

Today was barber day, ans that's where things got awfull... I got there but wasn't really feeling comfortable. I didn't really know what I wanted and the coiffeur just kept asking what I wanted. Instead of letting me see pictures and giving advice based on my head shape he asked me to come up with the haircut. In the end I gave directions contradicting each others and he got to work. Needless to say the result let me down... I kinda feel demoralized with that on the head and I got so worked up by it than I wasted my entire evening trying to work it out... I'm not the kind of guy who spend 2h in the bathroom before going out, I'm more of a "yeah, I don't care that will do..." but here I really got annoyed by it. I don't blame the coiffeur, I sould have known what I wanted, but a big part of me though that having that new look would start my proper change, that giving myself a proper appearance would let me be more open with others. Right now I'm bothered by the idea to go to the course tomorow and appear to others like that... Doesn't do well for my self-esteem of I'm being honest.

 

It made me realize how much I could distract myself. I basicly lost my evening because my hairs don't look good... I was fine with that a few days back considering how little I worked to have a decent look. I guess days waiting for it to happen and telling myself that it will put a proper start to my change got me open to that reaction. I shouldn't care, it's pointless because I can't change it right now. Yet, I lost an evening because of it...

 

I really wasn't expecting to fuck up so early. But I'm going to make the best of it; I'm still convinced that I need to take actions and change, if anything I'm more even more determined.

 

For a few positives notes, first one: I wrote this entry. I didn't really felt like doing so but I caught myself reaching for my phone as I was in bed. It's good to know that it really is part of my activities and that I'm not willing to let myself give that one up. I also talked to an old colleague, it was nice to connect back with him. I talked a lot about how I felt and I felt comfortable doing so. He also seemed receptive which was nice.

 

I'm really not sure about how to feel about today. I feel kinda stupid about losing so much time to so little but I also feel like it was an experience I needed to go through. Like I needed to really see how easy it could be to fall off track and go back procrastinating.

 

I guess a good sleep will do me good.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Magdar