I Find My Support At The Offshore Wind Farms - Part 3

It can be really lonely sometimes. Sometimes it is hard to keep on going this intensely. 

It’s not a choice that I made.

Actually I was never really drawn to blogging (lies; I tried but I could never pull it off) but it was suggested to me by one of my mentors. One of my many many former mentors. Back in the day. When I got serious about software engineering. When I say that it isn’t a choice I mean I just can’t stop. I really can’t stop.

Of course I stop working. 

I stop working  at a pretty reasonable time. And I even stop upskilling at a fairly reasonable time. And tried to reduce my upskilling on weekends. But I found that I could cap my python. But not my reflections and not my thoughts. I don’t think anyone can understand. Since I started doing this I can’t stop thinking about it but not in a bad way. 

The kaiser chiefs once said “there’s more to this than passing by, there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

There’s more to this than passing by, there’s more to this than meets the eye 

One of my favourite healing quotations is: “things are never quite what they seem.” My lecturer said it to me. It was at the end of my vampire module. 

I really really smashed that module. 

But what the teacher said moved something in my heart. Things are never quite what they seem. Or like it said on the blurb of one of my favourite books growing up, “Before I Die”: but getting what you want doesn’t always give you what you need. And sometimes the most unlikely things become important.” 

I didn’t get any of what I wanted in life.

I wasn’t able to do anything that most young people can do.

I wasn’t able to date for most of my twenties - I had a serious seizure condition - it wasn’t possible. I wasn’t able to have much of a social life.

I could barely leave the house at certain points of my twenties. I had to not do any non essential trips for a while and for a while even essential trips became too much.

Going out was the biggest no in the world. Attending nice events would only ever end one way. 

I still can’t drive and I would want it to be a year and a half free before I would ever even drive a car. I don’t know if it will get to the point when I decide I’m too old to learn. 

I prefer to live in nature so I don’t want to rule out driving. 

I couldn’t have a lot of what most people would call hobbies and due to my neurodiversity I can’t read very much especially fiction. During my twenties nearly everything was taken away from me that most people have. 

But am I sad? No. 

I learned to find happiness inside.

And what is more.

I learned to find happiness in my work 

I learned to find happiness in my work. My work became my passion.

When I didn’t have a social life; my lecturers office hours became the most fascinating moment of my life, and I loved to talk to them about the subject so much.

When my life consisted of studying and dealing with the after effects of seizures and some other related stuff; then I learned to love and be passionate about what I was doing. I guess that’s why I loved seminars and meetings. 

There was no party for me.

This was the party. 

But through all of this I learned to find a deep deep passion. And I learned to find what I loved. And I wonder if anyone can envy me now - I mean yes I would envy me.

To have something I loved that much and was that passionate about but it wasn’t born overnight. It was years and years of it building up and boiling over until one night everything just fell into place. And I found software engineering.

A full moon over Brighton late last night - somewhere near the offshore wind farms 

Looking back it all just seems like some kind of a hazy dream 

I mean it all just happened so fast. One minute I was writing a line of code and I thought “this could never be me.” 

But everything was aligning for me.

The whole universe was aligning. 

I kept on meeting the right people in the right places at the right time.

To say that I was motivated was to say nothing. I was on FIRE. I didn’t know anything below 100% motivation. 100% enthusiasm.

I was on fire. 

I was so motivated. I was so enthusiastic. I couldn’t stop. Every new lesson taught me something new about coding. 

I just wanted to find out what this crazy new coding thing was. 

Every software engineer I met I couldn’t stop bombarding with questions. I once questioned my principal engineer for two hours straight all the way home on the train from London at about 1 am. I couldn’t stop asking him questions. 

It was like the whole world was on fire. 

I was completely on fire. I couldn’t wait for the next event. I couldn’t wait for the next mentoring session. 

I couldn’t wait for the next pairing session.

I found myself totally and utterly and completely on fire. Software engineering fulfilled me. 

It made me so happy. And my condition continued but I didn’t care. It was like the sun couldn’t go out. I couldn’t wait to get to work every morning. All I wanted was to write some code. 

It was only 7 months to the day after I first started coding that I started my first coding job. And even then I could code at work before. 

I couldn’t wait. I would’ve paid to work really. So what’s changed? Well right now it’s a lot. Let me explain. It’s not that anything has changed I’m just so tired. Allow me to explain.

Well right now it’s a lot

It’s a lot more intense than it used to be.

Because right now I am working on real software development. And real software development is HARD. 

Real software development is hard hard work. And it requires you to think HARD. 

There is so much to learn every day. 

There is so much to learn. There is so much self reflection. 

And I almost cannot keep up with the rate at which I have to learn.

What am I learning 

I am learning so much. I am learning Python. I am learning Django.

I am learning Git. I am learning problem solving. I am learning independent working within software engineering, which is so hard. I am learning how to find the steps.

I am learning how to not miss the forest for the trees.

I am learning independent feature development. I am learning what it means to translate a human problem into a piece of code. I am learning that my manager would prefer it for me to come up with solutions even if they are bad than for me to ask a ton of questions. I am learning how not to be afraid of being wrong. I am learning how to communicate my communication needs to a company of 800 developers. 

I am learning how to be a master of my tools.

But most of all I just want to master Python.

My great great grandfather once wrote a two page autobiography. His whole life story was shorter than my average blog post. He went from coal miner to police officer. He said “in many a pit I have dug.”

If I had to tell the story of my life right now then I would say “on many a floor I have lain.”

But I don’t want that to be the story of my life 

I don’t want that to be the story of my life. 

And why should it be? My seizures came about in pretty tragic circumstances. That is not a story for this blog.

But they came on in my teens and they were caused by pretty tragic events. 

Which I had to deal with the consequences of just as much and probably more than the actual experiences of the seizures and that is saying a lot. My seizures are not typical they are rare and they are pretty bad and they last long but most of all I am usually not believed and especially not by paramedics (doctors are actually amazing) and so life has been really tough and it has been a lot to deal with.

But it’s not me.

And it’s not who I am.

My older sister once said to me: “what happened to you is not you.” 

I cried so hard at that. But it’s so true.

And so who am I 

I don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t know who I am anymore. 

But I know that I love Python. And I know that I want to learn more. 

And I know that code clicks for me very quickly. And I know that when I am not exhausted I can do good productive work. I know that I love software engineering.

But let’s focus on Python for now. I like that it does a lot of magic under the hood. I don’t really get it or know anything about it. But I want to learn more. I know that I am doing my courses right now. But they are so hard. I want to do them but I am doing them slowly. I want to pick up as much on the way as I possibly can. I want to consolidate everything as I go. 

I should probably play around a bit more with my own examples or maybe I should use one of my old manager’s old consolidation techniques… a bit more… 

If you’re asking yourself 

“If you’re asking yourself well how do you know then that’s your answer the answer is no.”

Jack Antonoff wrote this line into a song once. 

And that song was of course Margaret by Lana del Rey.

And that’s how I feel about my passion. 

If you’re asking yourself if it’s your passion it’s probably not. If you know though then you know. And I know. Believe me I know.

Initiate Part 2

Initiate phase 2. Initiate part 2. I don’t have any time to be distracted anymore. 

I need to focus. 

I need to focus on my dreams. And what do my dreams involve? My dreams revolve around

• Python 
• The pylons
• And the offshore wind farms

And that’s it. Well how could it be anything else? How could it be anything else than that? How could it be anything more than that?

“If you’re asking yourself well how do you know then that’s your answer the answer is no.”

If you’re asking yourself… well than that’s your answer. And how do you make your dream about the Python and the pylons and the wind mills and the visions of offshore wind farms? Well then that’s how you do it. And by doing it exactly like that. Yes please. 

Yes yes please please please thank you. 🙏 and if you’re asking yourself

Well how do you know

Then that’s your answer 

The answer is no

But as Lana del Rey also said: “when you know you know.”