I didn’t code for 4 months and it changed me as a developer forever
In July this year, I became the mom to a beautiful little girl, Emilia. I spent 4 months on maternity leave and it ended up changing the way I look at coding forever.
Coding had slowly over the course of the past year turned into something I wasn’t enjoying anymore. Don’t get me wrong — I wasn’t dreading it either, I just kind of did it. I have been working professionally as a front-end developer at IBM for 3 years, and I was lucky enough to be a part of Carbon Design System since the very beginning. IBM is a really great place to work and I have had the best team I could’ve asked for the whole time I’ve been there. So feeling this way about coding made me really sad and frustrated. I knew it wasn’t a reflection of the work I was doing because hey, we’re a pretty awesome design system, so I started fearing that coding just wasn’t for me anymore. That had to be it since I didn’t have the same drive as I used to. I remember researching other career paths in hope that another passion would reveal itself to me but it didn’t. This all made me feel inadequate at work and guilty for eagerly closing my computer at 5 pm every day.
A few weeks into my maternity leave I started to reflect on what I was feeling. I have always been a very motivated person with dreams and goals, and now all of the sudden it felt like I had none. So I began going on walks every day listening to inspirational podcasts. I read a lot about how to find your passion and I took some very embarrassing quizzes in hopes of getting an answer to what I was supposed to do with my life.
After a couple of weeks, it became clear to me. I wasn’t actually done with coding, I was just burnt out from it. What used to be fun had become a chore. And it occurred to me just how different we as developers treat this livelihood of ours. We’re expected to perform all day at work, and then at the same time be constantly learning and growing by staying up to date on any news in our spare time. We need to learn the newest it language, and preferably have a couple of side projects going on at the same time. So that’s what I did. I would work my butt off at IBM and then when I came home I would open up CodePen or some tutorial I was working on and I kept coding. All night long. I can’t think of any other profession that acts like this. I don’t see a bunch of accountants being active on Twitter every day talking about accounting news and doing accounting work for fun every evening. Now I’m not saying that it’s not okay if you’re one of those people that can do this forever and who breathe and think code — I’m just saying that it’s okay if you are not.
I think taking a step back and reflecting on a few questions is important now and then. Are you working on this side project because you’re passionate about it or because you feel that it’s expected of you as a developer? Are you missing out on other life events because of the pressure to always be up to date? Are you still having fun?
I recently posted a photo on Twitter where I poked fun at the huge gap in my GitHub activity during the time I was on maternity leave. I did this because initially, I felt bad when I saw this gap on my profile. This wonderful time I spent with my daughter made me feel bad. And that is just awful! This turned out to be my most popular tweet yet and I think that says something. I think being more open about the pressure we experience as developers is so important and no one should feel ashamed about wanting to take a break — even if it’s for one day, one hour or one year. If you go home after work and you choose to watch 5 episodes of The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix (watch it, it’s so good) instead of doing the latest Wes Bos tutorial — then go for it! And if you feel like spending the whole weekend working on an exciting side project — then that’s completely okay as well!
I enjoy coding again now, and I feel excited about learning new things and to grow as a developer — but at 5 pm I’m closing my computer and I’m going home to my family. I’ve realized that I’m okay with being a developer by day and a mom/wife/friend/gamer/binge-watcher by night.
