00 - A beginning...
Published: 2023-08-11 00:45:48

Well, it’s finally happened. I’ve posted my first blog post.

Hello, I’m Will and I grow things. I grow tomatoes. I grow cucumbers. I even tried growing mushrooms once, though ended up with about 12 strains of exotic, probably-lethal mold. 

I also like IT. At 30, I’ve spent the past few years tinkering in tech, and the last 12 months of that I’ve been working full time in the industry. Now, though, feels like the right moment to lean into the career and move from the phase of general dilettante with a smattering of knowledge across many interesting areas, to one where I can proudly say I’m a ‘professional in my field’. 

Doing this however is tough – tech is big! It’s a bit like waking up alone in the middle of a dense forest without GPS or a map. You can walk around each tree, no problem – in theory you can get anywhere -  The difficulty is in finding what is an actual path that leads somewhere. And even when you do, when you can’t see the destination it’s hard to decide if it’s even the right direction to go down. 
 
So, to milk this analogy, recently I’ve been trundling down a narrow animal track picking berries as I go. My current job as a level 1 junior engineer is a good opportunity to work in a professional IT environment and interact with far more experienced folks. It’s all in French (literally), so learning on the job beyond what I need do day-to-day is admittedly a little slower, but it’s a path, and one I’m grateful for. The question, however, is where is it leading? 

To give an idea of my recent ‘pathfinding’ (sounds more glamorous than ‘fumbling’), since 2021 I’ve studied all the basics of web dev (HTML/CSS, Javascript, the MERN stack, Webflow). In 2023 it’s been, Python, SQL, data analytics and machine learning on Jupyter. I think you begin to see the problem...

 On some serious refection, my issue has been thus: 

1) Strategy:
What is my strategy? Good question. Do I need one? Probably. After 3 years haphazard studying, I’ve come to the uncomfortable realization that I really I do…
It’s easy to talk about change and what we’re  going to do in the future, and to have short bursts of determination here and there,  but one of the key reasons why I’ve failed to make anything really ‘stick’ is, boringly, a standard case of Shiny Object Syndrome – i.e. chasing a new subject every few months because it seems fascinating… only for it to have little baring on my life and be replaced shortly after by another, and the cycle continues. And three years later you find yourself writing elegiac blog posts lamenting the inevitable loss of time wasted… Eheu!

Many paradigms in tech today overlap and it is nice to have a broad knowledge of many topics, sure. But when, after 3 years, you still don’t have enough deep knowledge or hands-on experience to consider yourself something near to a ‘professional’ who can walk into a job interview and have a real shot at decent job, to pursue a fulfilling career of your choosing, then it’s surely time to accept that something isn’t quite working.
It comes down, in my mind at least, to having a more realistic understanding of the possible consequences of pursuing a given specialisation – in other words, what the job roles would be in 10 years (‘Do I see myself potentially doing a job like that in 10 years?’) - it’s hard to assess this as a complete novice & outsider, but my current job certainly helps in this respect; And then having a clear, ‘longer-term’ strategy (in this sense I mean about 6-12 months, for me personally) planned with concrete steps laid out in sequence and leading to towards that career goal I’ve settled on, with some degree of commitment. Easy, right?

(This blog post is one small manifestation of that – a minute commitment to myself to walk the walk.) 

Objectively, I’ve made some progress recently. I’ve largely kicked procrastination’s butt and gotten into a better habit of spending my free time with effective learning. I’ve researched and decided upon a field I’m willing to dedicate at least the next 6 months really studying (cloud engineering), and drawn up a study guide of what I need to work on, in what order, and with what resources. I have milestones. I have a better note-taking, reviewing & planning system with Notion.so to keep things clear, organised and just flexible enough. I know at the start of each day what I’m going to study, what my ‘deliverables’ will be, and add a couple of stretch goals for fun (e.g. cover Bash scripting; create 3 small, practical scripts using variables and/or loops; complete EOD Thoughts and Summary; prepare tomorrow’s plan – I usually take all this from what I planned at the end of the previous day to minimize mental overhead. Maybe I’ll go into it in more depth in the future, but it’s still something of a Work in Progress now.) 
I have slots in my schedule for creating projects, weekly study reviews, and writing blog posts to help cement in my own mind what I’ve learned and to sort of force myself to bring things out from the comfort of the shadows and into the harsh light of day – and can serve as a way to document my progress to myself and a to future employer (part of Operation Get a Better Job). I have resurrected my long-lost LinkedIn profile and started to build a professional network. I’ve removed all distractions from my phone, deleted social media and installed habit-tracking apps. It feels like everything I’ve learned over the last few years on how not to make any meaningful progress, is coagulating and being channeling into this. _Am I… am I try-harding_? Maybe!  And the best thing about it so far? 
I like it.


Let’s hope I have more success in this than I did with growing mushrooms.