When I decided that I wanted to be a programmer, way back when I was still a dive instructor, totally dissatisfied with life. I knew that I had to commit to this thing. Not stop till I put my foot in the door. For the next year that's all I did. Initially it was tough, I'd do my dive brief and spend the next hour reading till I reached the dive site, the same thing on the way back. Then once all the gear was washed and things were prepped for the next day I'd go home and sit at my desk practicing what I read on the boat till bed time. After about six months of this Covid happened. I was stuck at home just like everyone else, I took this as a sign.Woke up early sat at my desk programmed all the time. This went on for another five or six months until I got my first job in software. I continued to work this way for the next year or so. It's what needed doing so it's what I did.
A bigger beast
I'm so thankful to myself for having gone through that experience, there were plenty of times where I felt I was done. Mostly because of the rejections. Yet, I would wake up the next morning and get right back into it. No weekends no days off. Now I have that experience to dip into, it acts as my motivation to keep going in my future endeavors. It does so even today. I needed to sift through that memory as this time I'm taking on a harder endeavor of turning my software into a business. I thought getting the first client would be hard, but every step after is just as hard. I've been feeling slightly overwhelmed by the amount of work that is still to be done on top of the work I have been doing. It's been seven days a week for the eight months or so and there is so much further to go. Yet, the story of me going through what I did in the past has energized me. I was never going to quit, I'm not cut out for carrying that kind of pain for the rest of my life. All I needed was a spark to help me take another step, what better than my own lived experiences. I needed that.