At the time of purchasing the domain, I was unemployed, looking around for some small freelance projects while embarking on my journey towards a Bachelor of Science Computing degree. I just quit my graphic design job at an advertising company who I worked for many years where I learned valuable lessons as a person and professional. They were great people to work with, but I did not enjoy the stress of agency life (I really miss our Friday song and the samoosas). The last few months I worked remotely.
I felt stuck in a routine that wasn't contributing to my mental wellbeing: sleep, sit in traffic, work, eat unhealthy food because I was too busy and tired to cook, sleep, sit in traffic. It felt like a poorly designed while-loop that resulted in a program crash, because it was using all the memory.
After my recent discovery of my MBTI type, everything made so much more sense. I realised that I do not belong in an environment where people work in shared spaces (the noise, oh lord, the noise) and where there is no time to even think of a more efficient way of working. Just get shit done, no matter what. There was no time to spend on quality, and the pressure to produce quality got to me when the deadlines are so tight. My aversion towards open offices is a topic for another article, but like I said, now that I know my type, I can effectively work better and flourish.
I was approached by a person on LinkedIn for a frontend web developer job, which turned out great, even though it was actually full-stack. I don't think people truly understand the difference between frontend and full-stack. I am not irritated by this, however, I am incredibly privileged, because I get to learn useful skills as well as apply what I learn at university in a real-life situation. I am going to walk away with a degree coupled with experience. I've learned to love PHP and Javascript (which still irritates the living shit out of me at times) by means of the Laravel and Vuejs frameworks.
I am now building applications I would have been too scared to start if I hadn't gotten this job. I am now loving mathematics, which I utterly loathed during my high school years. I see the true value of it.
I am somewhat angry with my past self for not realising any of this. I had to do a bridging maths course and failed it the first time. Perhaps I will also write about studying while working and how I approach it in a future post.
I've learned to stay humble, respect other people's time like I want them to respect mine. I've learned to be disciplined in whatever project I am busy with and to keep my mouth shut when I have a potentially offensive opinion about something. I've learned how to eat the right kinds of foods and stay healthy, I haven't been ill in years, except for that time when I went to visit my sister in Rotterdam over Christmas and ate way too much sugary shit.
I've learned many a valuable lesson. I am thankful for everything I have, for every person that is a part of my life and contributes to the richness of it, even though I might seem like I do not have an interesting life on social media.
And I should really stop starting my sentences with "I".