First Day Introduction

You Can Do This!
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Hello everyone.

I am posting this to give myself a point of reference as to when I started fcc and also to hopefully get some feedback from others who can relate to my current situation.

I am currently 33 years old and have an associates degree in an unrelated field but I dropped out of college two semesters before attaining my bachelors degree. I received a job in a field that I had interest in and there was also plenty of room for growth, so that held my interest for a number of years. I was recently laid off due to the pandemic and that coupled with recent feelings of being trapped in an unfulfilling career, have made me decide to give fcc a try and hopefully be able to make a career change at this stage of my life.

I took coding classes in high school and college and although the last one I completed was 10 years ago, I am still hoping that any knowledge retained from those classes will help. I am hoping I can use this unsolicited free time to better myself and finally learn some new skills. If anyone has any tips or input that could help, I’d be glad to hear it. I’m especially interested to hear input on what languages would be most important to learn currently. I hope everyone is well.

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Hey were pretty much on the same boat. I am 35 years old and the last time I touched code was almost a decade ago. LOL

I don’t exactly know what you are going through and based on your post, you felt that you are trapped in an unfulfilling career and you decided to give FCC a try and hopefully make a career change.

The answer that I am about to give isn’t related to coding, rather life in general and I think this will clarify some things for you if you are around my age group. You might be shocked to know that coding might not be what you are aiming for, but rather a catalyst to patch a longing desire for something else.

== About Myself ==
I have been stuck doing grunt work for the last 14 years as self employed almost like a odd job guy. You will be going around doing whatever is necessary to make the side hustle money.

Luckily, I am very good with personal finance and I am able to do very well for myself with that. But I never really reached the level of success that I wanted, certainly not the level of respect that I wanted.

So I wondered around for the past 14 years, reading books, studying psychology, personal development pondering about what is missing. Even though I felt like I am doing things right, but I am not accelerating. I am not broke, but I am not rich. I made some achievements that some people marvel, but it wasn’t on a level where you can be bragging about it in a large group.

Just a little more than a year ago on December 2018, I decided to make a serious change and reflect on why I am stuck. I knew something about business, because I was self employed. I knew a few things about self improvement, but I never really thought about how they all go together. It felt more like the more knowledge I have, the less I understand.

I know for certain that I need some sort of skill that is universally more valuable than odd jobbing. So I continue my coding path. But deep down this path isn’t entire want I wanted as well and I couldn’t pin point why.

So I started to research even deeper personally, more than what I already have. What I find is completely different from what I have expected.

== My Discovery ==
I thought I needed coding, but what I really wanted was something more. Fulfillment on an ambitious level. A career is nice, but I want to go beyond that. To reach that next level, I would need to do more than just coding. It is a tough situation.

I wrote down a detail description of my perspective and lens on every subject that I can think of, to find that road block that is preventing me from a “fulfilling career”. I wrote down everything about myself in past tense, present tense and where I wanted to be in the future. I did this over the last 4 months, because I really can’t afford to make a mistake anymore.

Within my writing, I found the problem.

== The Problem from the Past ==

  • Uncleared Vision & Desire
  • Actions & Results that does not contribute to your progress. (Dead End Work)
  • Wrong perception of how the world operates (Old way of thinking)
  • Relationship & Communication issues (Can talk, but not Persuasive)
  • Lack of Focus & Mastery (Good at some things, but not extraordinary)
    And the list goes on.

== The Problem in the Present ==

  • Lack of Mastery (No High Value marketable skills)
  • Poor Communication skills (Persuasion, Assertiveness, etc)

== The Target Future ==

  • Build a Tech Business

Now if you compare all three stages of development. You will see why my current path isn’t fulfilling EVEN if I already know how to code. This is why I said, your desire to code might be a catalyst to something else.

I will leave you with that note, “WHY DO YOU WANT TO CODE?”
Write down TRUTHFULLY what you want in the future, if it is simply because you want fulfillment. That will eventually fizzle out and you’ll be back to square one.

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