I Was Such A Fool For Believing...

But what if I wasn't. "White Mustang" is a song from Lana del Rey's Lust For Life album.

I covered it live for an event this year. Here I am playing it on the grand piano and singing it at the same time, my beautiful friend Stephen sang backing vocals.

I haven't had time to speak to Stephen for months but that is changing.

I am introducing a cut off time for when I stop working.

An intervention

For this week, I am going to stop all working and self study every day at 6 pm no matter what. The only exception is writing about my goals, blogging about my goals, or reading a programming book. I might still write the Zen of coding.

Just for a week we want to see how this works and if it makes me feel less exhausted. Then after that I might re-introduce a bit of Python outside of hours - courses and/or especially problem solving. Or rather especially courses. Was that a Freudian slip? Idk why.

The course plan is as follows:

• Intermediate Python
• Django course
• Advanced Python

I am actually writing this after 6 pm but that's okay as it's not strictly working.

I was such a fool for believing

I was such a fool for believing.

I was such a fool for believing I could retrain as a software engineer -> But it's been my job for nearly a year and a half

I was such a fool for believing I could get rehired into a python job -> But I DID get rehired into a Python job, after working in JavaScript for the first year or so

I was such a fool for believing I could complete a bootcamp -> But I DID complete a bootcamp, even though it was so hard for me from a neurodivergent perspective

I was such a fool for believing that I could stay in renewable energy and in software engineering -> But I did, I work for a renewable energy company, and I just work in the water division, where I can bring my renewable energy knowledge to anyway

I was such a fool for believing that I could find a new role after I lost my last one -> But I found two

I was such a fool for believing I could keep a blog -> But I have written something like 350 technical blog posts across three blogs

I was such a fool for believing that I could post on LinkedIn about this -> but I do every day and I have thousands of followers

I was such a fool for believing I could be open about my neurodiversity in the workplace -> But now I am as open as you can be and it hasn't stopped me

I was such a fool for believing that I could recover from a serious chronic illness of over 15 yers -> But it's getting better and better

I was such a fool for believing that I could switch quickly from VSCode into Pycharm -> but with a lot of help including from people who would rather not be using pycharm it seems to be working

I was such a fool for believing that I could learn how to code -> I can code in Python, HTML, CSS, JS/TS, and React

I was such a fool for believing I could get hired from Product into Engineering -> It took me just over 6 months of coding to receive my first offer

I was such a fool for believing I could train in a startup -> Yep that was pretty tough but it got me to where I needed to be to get to where I am right now

I was such a fool for believing I could become a software engineering voice -> People are reading! People are reading every day!

I was such a fool for believing I could become the last person I ever expected or thought I could be i.e. a software engineer

Carry on being foolish

Let's carry on being foolish.

I was such a fool for believing

And will you be? Will you? I am such a fool for believing I can make it through...