It's been a tough year (and a half) for all of us and sometimes you can find relief in the weirdest places. I've been dealing with mild depression since before this whole pandemic came to be and it only made it worse. When work used to be a place where my mind could be distracted and the social interaction made it all less lonely. The lock down took away so much from me and don't get me wrong I was lucky, still had job and I could work without much danger to myself. As time went on it got harder to feel motivate to do anything other than the minimum. And believe me if I spend the whole day on Zoom, I really don't want to talk to a therapist through Zoom as well.
But one day while working from home and researching to create a new API for work it hit me! The reason I love what I do is that I'm creating something. I'm the architect, engineer and contractor of my ideas that turn into code and then to a product for my clients. The rush I feel when planning things out and then figuring out how to do it. The research, the trial and error brings so much joy and excitement.
Why couldn't I use this in my personal life to make me feel better. Not just as work but as therapy in a sense. So I went home and looked up courses online related to the languages I already knew. What could I do to keep me entertained and happy? I took some time ( a lot of unfinished courses/projects ) to find something that was light enough for me to pick up and put down as needed. Something that tickled my fancy but help me grow as professional. I found myself feeling more engaged and less sad after work. I wanted to do more and hopefully feel like I could step outside and interact with other people that are like minded.
In a sense code (and music, cause who develops without a soundtrack, right?) saved me. And while I might still not be a world class developer, I'm heading to be a happier developer. For example, I'm learning python (been a Java girl for last 10 years) and as part of a course I'm trying to finish I had to make a simple terminal script and then blog about it (which is why I'm here). I decided to make a simple quote fetcher to help me have a motivating quote on demand, also to learn how to make REST calls in python. While the assignment was not supposed to be an emotional blog on how I feel, it lead me to this and I feel like it helped. I hope it helps someone else... here's the Github
Be kind to one another and keep coding,
GAJR
Top comments (1)
Yay! Keep it going! Code forever!