Writing optimal code is not optimal (sometimes)

I've been into computers in general since I was quite young. Some of my first interactions with computers happened when I was 5 years old or younger. I don't remember much from that time, but I recall learning the basics like using the start menu, installing a game from a CD included with a magazine and using Skype, all on a pre Windows XP era PC. I have no idea how it happened but I quickly became drawn to computers.

I was often staying at my late grandmother's home at that time and when I was around 7 years old she was trying to get her driver's license and had a Windows XP computer borrowed into her house. It had no internet access, just and admin account and a program for practising the exam questions. When I was bored I would just try out to click on things and learn what they meant and the thing I remember is making Windows account with different cute account pictures and names, since Windows XP had a few pictures built-in. That was one of the first times I was doing something I'd consider tinkering with the computer instead of just using it like a normie. Thinking about it now that was actually a pretty impressive thing for me to figure out by myself when put in the perspective of all the people I met later in life who were struggling with technology.

And as such my IT story begins. The timeline after the events above basically goes like this:

1. I learned to plug in a PC on my own (although I must say it was really trivial even at that time)
2. I installed JRE and a cracked version of Minecraft (somehow I didn't catch a virus and please don't criticize me for cracking the game, I didn't understand that I should pay for it nor did I have the money for it, at the time I didn't even know it was a paid game)
3. I wrote some really basic batch scripts
4. Third grade - I made a few extremely basic styled html sites just going by the tutorials (but I didn't understand a single thing I did there, I've substituted some text content and did marginally more complex mods at best like adding a tag - btw. does anyone even remember that this tag existed? I thought it was so cool when I first discovered it)
5. Fourth grade - I got my first own PC that I rocked for many many years. It was 2014 and the PC had an i5-4690k, MSI Z87-G43 mobo, Asus GTX 750 Ti, 8GB of Kingston DDR3 RAM at 1600MHz CL9, 120GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD and Corsair CS650M psu (you never forget your first, do you)
6. I had my own Skype now, played on Minecraft servers and met some people my age there
7. I made some more advanced batch scripts
8. I learned how to make my own Minecraft Server
9. And then how to make a server with plugins
10. And how to configure and use those plugins
11. And how to host that server online
12. And I learned a scripting language for a plugin named Skript
13. And I learned some C++ and wrote some of my first real, compiled programs
14. At some point have finally learnt a bit of Java and made my first simple plugin (still didn't understand what a JVM is)

And I generally had a lot of f**king fun.

That has continued for a bit, but at some point it came to a halt.
I'm gonna skip over a lot of important and relevant to the state of affairs details from my life here for the sake of getting to my point before the universe ends.

Basically I've lost the joy I once had from doing and learning stuff. There was an absolute ton of factors that came into play, but one was definitely me wanting to take computer science, especially programming more seriously and prepare for a job. In trying to satisfy some non-existing entities I've made less and less stuff while simultaneously reading "Clean Code" of Robin C. Martin and learning to do stuff "the proper way" from the book and other sources. But the pressure for being more "professional" and "doing things the right way" was becoming stronger and getting more and more in the way of creativity.
I would try to create something, but whenever I encountered an issue, especially an architecture and design problem, I'd freeze up, and even if I thought of a solution that would work at the moment, I was smart enough to know that there had to be a better one, but not smart and determined (due to a variety of life factors) enough to think it up or find it.

And first and foremost I was not smart enough to see that writing "bad" code wasn't actually a bad thing at all. In the lookout for perfection I didn't realize that the most important thing is to create and that making mistakes was perfectly fine, and taking time to fixing them later was not a waste of time - it is a part of learning process that I wanted to skip over, because I considered making mistakes during that process a failure.

In trying to waste no time I wasted an astounding amount of time.

Instead of creating, I procrastinated and stressed about not creating - and it became a habit. A habit I'm still struggling to break and has negatively impacted my life as a whole and not just my passion.

So: Make mistakes, deliberately if you have to. If you are stuck just write the shittiest code, but the one that will make the thing work. There is no solution more permanent than a temporary one, but at some point you will fix it when you figure out how to do it better. Don't let ANYTHING get between you and your passion. Making mistakes IS NOT A MISTAKE and writing optimal code IS NOT OPTIMAL when you are NOT WRITING IT!

Let yourself learn and grow <3