I’ve had a major life event happen 4 weeks ago, let’s just say it wasn’t a death, but involves a similar amount of grieving. Now, since then, I’ve moved into a new place. I haven’t turned the TV on in weeks, just been reading, reconnecting with old friends and generally getting back into life. I am enjoying this a lot.
The problem is, I’m paying a price for my new found life. My desire for coding, and even chasing a junior job has totally gone out the window. I’ve been making websites with various CMS systems for years, learned a large chunk of PHP, up to MVC (udemy course, created an MVC framework from scratch, was awesome) and then Laravel. I was doing FCC every day for quite awhile now and was getting pretty handy with JS, until I met “cash register”. That threw me way off, tried for days, then looked at the solution. I’m still staring at the solution and I get it, but feel like I cheated myself by doing that.
I wanted to move onto react, or nodejs/mongo but thinking to myself, would it be a better option to stick with vanilla JS for awhile? I mean how can I get the enthusiasm back for this? Would it be wise to just take a total break and come back to it in a few weeks time?
Looking for some advice really from other people that have felt similar. I’m 39 now, and had my heart set on a development career, but now I’m not so sure.
Thanks for reading.
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Well Firstly my response as a coder would be:
Don’t give up keep pushing find more fun ways to do that which you already can do, embrace the challenges and create solutions that are unique in your own way, help people whom are struggling with code for a while and take a little break from your coding.
And then as a Person who went through all of this before i would say:
Bro take a break focus on your self for a while focus on the things that makes you happy and don’t regret a second of it, if you feel like coding again then take it slow and let your interest spark again, and most of all just remember success is not just measured in a degree or your capabilities to complete a task but also measured in happiness,joy,love and how you live your life <3
I really wish you all the best and hope that you do find your way back to coding
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Hi there. I’m so sorry that you’re going through a tough time. I wish you the best in moving through it to healing.
Was your desire for a coding job linked with what/who you lost in some way? If so, it’s reasonable that you’ve lost a motivating factor. I would think that taking a break for a few weeks would be best.
However, put when you plan to get back to it on your calendar, with reminders! Don’t let yourself drift away completely.
Good luck!
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Thanks to you both.
@EliteCobra, yes I agree that I need to focus on myself for now. I think some kind of project that I have personal interest in might help rather than just doing exercises.
@CynLynn yes, the desire was indeed linked, you picked that up correctly. I wanted to provide a better life for my family and I thought by spending hours on end coding, I could do that. How wrong I was.
So why not move onto React, Nodejs, and Mongo? Whats stopping you? Worst case is you move on and you find you aren’t ready and need to brush up on more fundamentals.
I was, flying through the entire JS curriculum, with a few years of experience programming, and at least a year programming JS. I run into the Cash Register challenge, and get stuck. I get stuck for a few days and days turn into a few weeks.
At this point I basically gave up on the challenge. I didn’t feel like grinding through it, and I spent my time learning other things in FCC, and outside of FCC. There might be a day when I got back and finish that challenge, but that might not be any time soon. I personally would rather go and learn React then grind and that’s fine.
It’s important to keep things in perspective, if your goal is to become a web developer, then go out and become one by trying to be one. Odds are your probably missing skills here and there, but if you skip one challenge now, because you want to focus on more important skills then go for it. Yes you wont get your certification for the section until you finish it, but who cares? Employers only care about what you know, not how many challenges you finished. Go learn something fun, go do something fun, and keep progressing. There is no rule as to what you need to finish what in what order.
Good luck and keep building 
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@bradtaniguchi thanks. I was having much more fun when I was building my movie app compared to just doing challenges. I wanted to rebuild it from MVC PHP to nodejs/react. I think maybe I’ve fallen into the trap of learning for the sake of learning, rather than learning what I need to know in order to build something.
Gonna give it a couple of weeks to relax and process what’s just happened in my life, then get stuck into react.
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Great i really loved this.
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Don’t let a challenge stop you. I had almost the same situation when facing the intermediate challenges, but I moved into React, and sometimes I went back to try again finishing the challenge, I felt satisfied because I was learning something new and useful, and I had the chance to (if i wanted) challenge myself with those intermediate challenges. Another important thing, is, don’t feel guilty because you looked at the solution, it is good to challenge ourselves, BUT a lot of times we LEARN A LOT by looking at the solution, it teaches us ways to solve problems (as long we understand it), and we can apply that knowledge to other problems. After all, a loooot of the knowledge that we have is not because we faced/lived it but it comes from another person (book, video, written solution, audio, anything).
Plus, if you want more resources than fcc, the book “Pure React” is pretty good for learning it, I recommend it with my eyes closed, after all it worked for me, and it gives you the basic understanding react.
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