100 Days of Code: Day 13

Yep. This pretty much sums up how I feel about today.

Ugh…mein Gott I’m glad today is over…

So I wasn’t able to work on my Bootstrap tonight for several reasons…all of them poor excuses but I’m going to list them anyway.

1. My husband needed to use my laptop to do his C++ homework since the program he needs to use runs on Windows 10 and not Windows 7 for some reason. This is the same laptop with my Bootstrap files on it. Why I didn’t move the files over to Github to avoid this, I honestly don’t know. And my laptop wasn’t free until late, so that happened….
2. I’m hurting a lot today and took time to let my body rest. For those of you that don’t know, I have fibromyalgia. And it’s raining where I live today. Fibro + Rain = Badness! This was calmed down to a point when I went to physical therapy today since they were able to help work out my broke-ass body. And I’m always wiped once I get home, so I watched more Grace & Frankie and started a new game for Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Final Mix. Playing KH1.5: FM reminds me why I haven’t gone back and replayed Kingdom Hearts…game is annoying af. So that happened….
3. My laptop was not free until MUCH later than I had hoped. By that point, I was too tired to try and even learn new Bootstrap styles, so I made a worse choice and decided to try and do a coding Kata on Codewars….this didn’t go well.
4. So instead I tried to work on my Intermediate Algorithm Scripting challenges on FreeCodeCamp….this was less punishing than Codewars but I needed the hints to figure out what I was doing wrong. I only got the first two challenges completed, with help, in a little over an hour. I feel very defeated and sort of dumb.

Allow me to explain.

If you look at the years I’ve been “making websites” since I graduated in 2011 and 2012 (one class wasn’t available until Spring of the next year — thanks college) it would appear that I should know a ton about making websites. And I do…but I suck at JavaScript. You think it’s hard trying to keep up with JavaScript libraries popping up all over the place, try learning Vanilla JS and then trying to apply the little you know to a coding challenge. It will humble you — I guarantee it! And whenever this happens I get the Coder Imposter Syndrome coming out from the far reaches of my brain.

Mine happens to take the form of a thinner, prettier looking version of myself with long, shiny hair, skinny jeans, knee boots that actually fit her calves, and a black t-shirt with the word “BITCH” spelled out in white uppercase font, that keeps telling me “You know you’re too stupid to be able to figure this stuff out.” And “There you go again, looking at the hints for help. Didn’t anyone tell you looking at the hints and then the answer because you’re ‘frustrated’ is just an excuse to get the answer?” And the usual “You’re so lazy! Anyone worth their salt can do this easy shit, why can’t you?” And the always popular “You know you’ll never get the hang of this. And all those people that can catch on to coding faster than you will excel beyond you, get the better paying job, the chance to live in Japan, get out of debt, be able to pay for the numerous options to lose weight and look good, and have a fulfilling life…while you sit here near tears trying to figure out how to convert a regular number into a roman numeral and CAN’T! Go ahead and cry — it’s always your fallback when things get too hard anyway.”

Well you know what? Maybe I will cry. And so what if I do! It’s cathartic and helps me get the bad emotions out and puts me back in my center so I can keep trying and keep going. Yeah I may never have all the things you listed, but it doesn’t mean I’m stupid or that I’m “cheating” when I use the hints to get started on a challenge or to figure out where I went wrong for my solution. As long as I don’t directly copy the solution and I understand what the solution is doing and why it works, then who cares?

I’m Charlie Brown, Lucy is Life in General, and my goals at the football. Stop making it so hard life! Damn!

I know I’m not the only person that thinks this way. So I wanted to share my personal side a little tonight and tell you to go ahead and cry / be frustrated / be angry. It’s ok. Just make sure you get back to center and keep trying. You only lose when you decide to stop trying.

So yeah, I had a bad coding day and a shite emotions day too. But it doesn’t stop me from getting my hour in for the day. I’ll have this posted at 12:13am, but I finished that second problem around 11:40pm and that’s what counts. Plus I see where I went wrong too, so I also have that going for me.

Definitely taking this quote to heart today. Relish the victories, learn from the mistakes.

But I’m also working on getting the assets and layout for a game I want to make in Unity. Most of my files were on my old desktop computer, so I decided to multi-task and transferred my files the same time I was working on my hour of code. And now I’m ready to go for tomorrow. And I can’t wait.

And that’s it for me tonight awesome people. Stay classy and code on!