Set Yourself On Fire, Part III

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Set Yourself On Fire, Part III

I was 28 when I discovered a passion.

I went into an office on a weekend and wrote a first line of code. My whole world imploded and the whole universe conspired to tell me that I was meant to be a software engineer - people just showed up everywhere and all the time to tell me that I was meant to do it. I was not prepared for the insanity that ensued. Getting hired really fast. Getting laid off. Getting hired again.

Bridging the skills gap. Oh my God. Nothing has ever prepared me for this.

Nothing has ever prepared me for what I have been through in the last couple of years. The intensity of this job has been just madness.

But I love it. And here it is, that's what I'm here. I'm here to code.

I am here for when I remove the parameters from a function that are not necessary. I am here for the way it feels when it clicks and when it all adds up. I am here for the way it feels when someone asks me if I enjoy my job and I don't even know how to answer them because I love it so much.

I am here for the challenges and the hard times too. I am here for when my boss suggests trying out new workflows to see what I can be more effective with. I am here for every time I cried on the way home from London

As I wrote up feedback and tried so desperately hard to process it. And tried so desperately hard to remember it. And just tried so very hard to implement it and put it into practice the next day. I am here for all the moments when I thought I couldn't do it. I am here for coming into work and not having a standup first thing to get me focused and trying to work around that as well. I am here for realising that I just have to work on the next ticket. I am here for the fact that it was my job to learn for so long that I almost forgot what it was like to have a job where you really have to output stuff, back in the early days.

Crazy as that may sound. I am here for the moments.

I am here for the loneliness. I am here for the crazy sense and that feeling of disappointment. I am here for: how can I be working 24/7 and the results still not be showing and coming through.

I am here for the rests and the breaks with my Dad in the Isle of Wight and in the New Forest. I am here for not having time to call my family but then finally having time to call them again.

I am here for all the moments.

I am here for not being able to dance for five years because of the seizures and for how it feels to dance again.

A bright pink picture with lots of hearts. Text reads: doing everything that you do out of love and why it is worth it.

I am here for all of the blog posts that I wrote and the hours and hours of work that I did. I am here for how much I loved the work. I am here for how much I love water and renewable energy.

I am here for how I did everything that I did out of love.


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