A Terrible, Yet Beautiful Year
I am grateful for this sh***y unbearable year - I'm thankful that when I was fired on November 22, 2021 from a lucrative cyber security position and realized that nobody else had my own best interests in mind other than myself and my partner, I decided to leap head first into full stack development.
While I had years of WordPress, Wix, SquareSpace, and whatever other low-code/no-code solution I could find, I felt unfulfilled and knew something lay waiting for me if I finally would stop procrastinating learning web dev and just go all in.
It's a year and one day later - I'm not sure if what I just experienced was the worst year or the best year of my life - every life issue imaginable as come up and extreme stress around money nearly ruined my relationship with my fiance - because I still am not sure what this road looks like for me and every hard lesson from the last year has molded me into a compassionate, yet tough-minded, creative problem-solving individual who loves programming so much more than just the salary I initially set out for.
This year was brutal because of a lot of things that were supposed to happen didn't happen; I got ripped off by multiple clients and also gave away way too much of my free time - I'm just now learning to ask for what I'm worth. But after coming to tough terms with the last 366 days and what has transpired, I know that I really am just touching the ice berg on what I can do with my career and finally have a lot of people asking for quotes and to apply for jobs.
Do I take the gig I've worked so hard for or do I stay true to my entrepreneurial spirit and play out a tough road ahead in a tough economy? The fact I can sit and have this choice vs. sitting where I was a year ago - fired, hopeless, and trying to figure out how to set up an Express server while learning Python, Angular, and JavaScript at the same time - is a sign of growth and something big around the corner for me.
I don't have another week of that suffering in me however, so I choose to be thankful while sitting here reflecting on this crazy, shitty year. I learned so god damn much and went through some of the lowest lows and worst, hurt feelings I have in my life - I've forgiven and forgotten, been cheated and turned around to give my trust out again, and let anger be soothed by love during the hardest year of these 31 I've experienced. I don't know if the road to where I'm going had to be like this, but I know now that my worst fears can come true and I'll be ok.
As I step off into another unknown as another year begins with some freelance work, but no full time role and a large gap on my work history, I do so with the confidence in myself to build kick ass web applications with cutting edge technology, thanks to the awesome dev community. Reading your posts, taking your courses, and sharing your story has inspired me to put in grueling days to learn as much as I can and build as much as I can.
Thank you to everyone who has inspired me, liked my posts, seen my GitHub, encouraged me along, shared tiny truths, and just taught me how to dev - I have found a community that feels like family even though I may not know a single one of you personally. Thank you for unintentionally joining my journey into become a full stack developer and I hope we can continue to make the world better for more Thanksgivings to come.
Story To be continued....
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