exhilarating sense of freedom
fear
and a tremendous dose of confidence
The unbearable feeling of freedom and unjustified confidence coupled with euphoric mood.
I have been thinking about certainty lately, uncertainty, to be more precise. How much of it do we need daily? 100% of the time? What happens when we are only 50% certain about the next step? 30%? Any other takers?
Frankly speaking, I always thought I was the one who needed to know everything: when, what is happening, how, who and where…However, the last few months forced me to change. Yes, forced (I didn’t want to change, who wants, anyway?) and yes, I did change. This is not a miraculous transformation of myself to a more calm and peaceful minded person. I am just at that moment of realizing that there is a shift.
I am beginning Week 4 of HackerYou’s Full time Web Development Bootcamp that is preparing us to enter the exciting industry. I am truly amazed how the 6-hour lectures with the guidance of Brenna, Drew, Wes, Heather and guest mentors are already molding us to think like developers. Of course, I can’t forget to mention the support of other 24 students who are all in the same boat as me cruising through the web waves. Speaking of students, Friday’s Show and Tell where students can showcase the new skills, various tips is quickly becoming one of my favourite part of the course.
In preparation for my Show and Tell 5 minutes of fame, I tried to focus on finding a topic that I knew well but didn’t know the CSS way of doing things. If you are familiar with clipping image as a text background in Photoshop, you know how great and addictive it is. I definitely overused it but that didn’t go to waste as I became really good at clipping and now was the time to accomplish the same result though coding. After a little bit of search and a longer coding/playing around, here is what I came up with:
Essentially, two main css properties you need to set images as text backgrounds are text-fill-color and background-clip. Try taking text-fill-color out of the code, the picture disappears. If you delete background-clip property, the text is gone and you are now left with two men who clearly need to be introduced to a soap.
I am glad that I volunteered to present during the first week of the bootcamp; this really put me out of my comfort zone asI had to present what I have learned to a group filled with, what I can describe as, geniuses/artists.
Coming back to the topic of uncertainty, I guess this answers my question on what happens when we are only __% certain (insert the appropriate number) about the next step? We get surprises. Sometimes good, at times, not so much. Uncertainty frightens. Yet it attracts possibilities. We on purpose put ourselves in the uncertainty zone while gambling, shooting hoops, taking a class outside of our major or eating street food. Why wouldn’t we if there is a chance that we win, score, actually learn something and pass a class, find out the taste buds we didn’t know about?
Besides, you have this staggering sensation of freedom and unjustified confidence. I honestly can’t tell whether uncertainty or this feeling comes first. There you go, that’s my answer for now. Bob’s your uncle, as one might say.
