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Gerrit Weiermann
Gerrit Weiermann

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Stressed, not excited?

Hey there, in my first post I wanted to share a mental health issue I got in my life which I didn't fix by now... maybe I'm not alone with it :)

How I went there

Some years ago I had an internship at a very nice software company. They wanted to remake their webapp a modern design and replace the Angular 2 implementation with Angular 7. So I made also like three pages or so. It was a pretty straightforward task: I got screendesigns, access to their old system and its code.
I worked pretty hard on my task so I actually got a little pocket money (which wasn't usual for them).

So, because I worked so hard, my stress level always got very high when I arrived home (I was 17). This could have helped in developing my issue.

So while I had the internship, I didn't like the idea that one needs to draw a screendesign, export it and then a programmer needs to depict it.
There should be something that puts both processes together.

Then I actually started a project that should handle the problems I faced.
(By this time, there are some softwares like web flow or retool that can already do that).
You can imagine that this is a huge project you can't handle alone. But I don't bother to start big projects that I discontinue after a week.

I liked the idea way too much...

I dreamed of starting a company someday that makes money with modern software solutions that are just drag'n'dropped together in a week or so, but still with high quality.
At the end I worked on it like three years, often freezed, but my head continued working on it (thinking about it got me symptoms I describe below).

My current issue

Before that story happened, I was really excited about every new technology and learned them, and was very happy and stuff. I guess we all know this feeling :)

After the story above, I got a little paranoia.
That someone else could come up with my ideas or simply solve my problem in another way (Sidenote: now there are already companies that offer that indeed and they are getting popular).

Now when I'm excited my stress level increases and I can breath more difficult, my stomach contracts.
That is when I learn something new, when I'm thinking about programming and even while I'm writing this post...

Fortunately I let my utopia dream go, with a very little hope to reach get it reality.
It's getting better, but still isn't good...


This article was my very first on the internet :)
Hope you liked it!
Feel free to share all your thoughts on this :D

Top comments (3)

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midasxiv profile image
Midas/XIV

I feel we need to be true to ourselves first, by that i mean always remember why you do what you do; If your true intention was to solve the problem then you should see this whole situation as "Hey, thank goodness I don't have to do this on my own; someone finally has solved the problem." and adopt the solution; basically have a positive outlook to this.
and yes we're all developers and we all want to contribute to the community; we may not be able to solve all the problems that we come across but as long as we keep trying we'll pickup the knowledge and tools required to eventually make an impact.
and you're just 20! and you have already spent 3 years in trying to develop something so complex, you may not have something that's as good as what these companies have but the thing is it doesn't have to be, what you learnt along the way is something that's never going to be wasted or taken away from you :D.

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codinghusi profile image
Gerrit Weiermann

Yeah, thank you very much for your comment :)
Most of the time I start projects and I know that I won't finish them. I'm ok with that. I learn a lot, either new language or new toolset or I see how productive I actually can be.
I don't feel like I wasted my time on that specific project, but more and more I want to create something that you can use in the real world. I have 8-9 years of experience, but only build like two or three things you can actually use.
And I'm thankful to the companies that they'd shown me, that I need to let my project go :)
What also stressed me:
I have no one to talk or brainstorm about projects because all my friends have a skill way less than my...

Thank you again for your reply โค

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midasxiv profile image
Midas/XIV

"all my friends have a skill way less than my..."
you remind me so much of my myself, what I do is keep an eye out in communities whether it be dev or discords or just youtube channels ( some have their own discords and challenges/hackathons ) and eventually try and talk to a few and make more friends/networks.