This is a submission for the 2026 WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience
Here's a story from my own journey.
There's a version of this story ...
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Great and excellent.
Thanks, glad you liked it!
It's my pleasure.
This really resonated with me.
The line about “waking up and not knowing what the next meaningful step should be” hits hard. I think many of us in tech go through that phase where the path suddenly feels unclear.
What stood out most to me was the part about building things again just for the joy of creating. That’s something I’m rediscovering myself while learning cloud and sharing my projects publicly.
Sometimes the small projects we build during uncertain times end up rebuilding our confidence more than anything else.
Thank you for sharing such an honest story.
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment — I'm really glad the post resonated with you.
I completely agree about small projects during uncertain times. Sometimes building things just for the joy of creating is what helps rebuild confidence and direction.
Wishing you the best with your cloud journey and the projects you're sharing.
Thank you!
Such a great and relatable post, you're 100% right. Nothing should define you other than yourself, and I say that from experience.
Once you realize you're not a developer just to do whatever someone else needs, but also to do what you need, that's when you start feeling better about yourself and your motivation skyrockets.
And this motivation is different, it's not external. External motivation usually fades away pretty quickly. This is internal motivation, the kind that stays with you long-term, and that's way more important than the other kind.
Thank you, I really appreciate this perspective. You're absolutely right — internal motivation feels very different from external motivation, and it tends to stay with you much longer.
I'm really glad the post resonated with you.
Wow! It is a great article. I completely understand your story because we have all been there in our career. It doesn't matter which industries. You feel that the role did not work out etc... I mention to people that one door close and another door open. The journey is not the final destination but it is just the beginning of it.
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment. You're right — many of us go through similar moments in our careers, even if the details are different.
I like how you framed it as a journey rather than a destination.
You are welcome! that is true about our career. You have to look at life as as journey than a destination. You will never know where you will be in 5 or 10 years.
Thanks for the reminder. That's very true — sometimes the most interesting parts of the journey are the ones we never planned.
exactly! I have to remind myself sometimes :)
Very true — we all need that reminder sometimes.
yep!
The line that matters: "waking up and not knowing what the next meaningful step should be." That's not unemployment that's the gap between what you were told to want and what you actually need. Most people fill it with more applications. You built stupid things instead. That's the difference.
That's a really interesting way to frame it. Building those small projects during that time helped me reconnect with why I started coding in the first place.
That's exactly it, sometimes we get lose of why we actually started, but the good thing is we find a way why it happened in the first place and never lose such fuel.
True - finding our “why” again makes all the difference.
I really understand you. I retired after many years of work. And with my wife leave Italy for coming in Georgia in Tbilisi. Georgia is a very beautiful place but i'll be honest after 3 years i knows 20 words of this language. It is very difficult to understand and more again to learn at my age. All habits change, all rituals, getting up to go to work, new country, different people (fantastic persons). Then i rethink why i chose to involve in IT, because i am curios, like you if i well understood, want to explore and resolve problem and discover every time new ways to do things. For this reason i started again to study,, builded my personal website, and play with Projects on IA and write some open source tool. Ah, and I started playing the guitar again. Good luck to you.
Ciao.
Did someone mention "Tbilisi, Georgia"? 😄 I live there, and yes, Georgian is an incredibly difficult language to learn. I take it for granted since it's my native language, but I can only imagine how challenging it must be for others.
It's nothing like most other languages, it's completely different. I recently started learning Italian, and many things feel pretty easy because I already know English and can spot similarities between the two. Georgian, though? That's a completely different animal. It even has its own unique alphabet.
"That's a completely different animal" - How beautifully this is said 😋
Thank you so much for such a thoughtful comment. Moving to a new place really changes everything — the language, the routines, even the small daily habits.
The city also had beautiful weather, and I was really lucky with the people around me. For me, the biggest challenge was actually the food more than the language.
It's inspiring that you started building projects again and even picked up the guitar. I’ve also been thinking about learning the guitar someday and exploring some hobbies once things settle down a bit.
Wishing you many more curious adventures ahead. Ciao!
This is great. I wish you luck in your journey. Thanks for the nice experience you've shared in this article
Thank you, that means a lot. Writing this one felt very different from my usual technical posts.
Sometimes the lessons that shape our careers don’t come from code, but from the messy parts in between.
I totally agree with this mentality. These days, everyone aims big, but it’s the small wins that often make the biggest impact in day-to-day life.
Well said. Big goals matter, but it's usually the small wins that keep the journey moving.
Thank you
Glad it resonated.
True, everyone is different. The hardest part is finding yourself again after you have forgotten it for a while. But when you do, I assure you, all will be well.
Thank you for the kind and thoughtful words.
I hope so too — and soon. When it does, this article will remind me of what this time has taught me.
did you use chatgpt in writing the article ?
the style feel exactly the same
I did use AI to polish structure and grammar, but the experience and writing are my own.
That said, making assumptions like this on a personal post feels a bit misplaced.