How Becoming A Web Developer Changed My Life.

It is late 2009, and I work up to 11 hours a day in a factory-style bakery. There are no lunch breaks, just ten minute breaks every couple of hours. A year and a half ago, I left my previous job managing bakeries for a large chain store. I am 37 years old.

I watch as a fellow I trained at my previous job (we’ll call him Ben) gets a promotion at this job, mixing dough. This is something I am well acquainted with. I have been mixing large batches of dough since I was eighteen. The foreman tells me I should put in a bid for the most physically demanding job in the factory, picking up bread pans off the conveyer belt as they come out of the oven. There is no thought process involved in this position.

I realize that no one at this job is going to use any talents I have. I realize no one is going to help me but myself.

I start taking web development courses through an online university. The curriculum is woefully behind the times, but it puts me on the path I need to start walking.

A few months later, Ben almost gets fired for twenty-five consecutive batches of dough, because he confuses salt and sugar. The cost is five figures in materials alone, plus the wages of every person on the floor for those hours. Not pretty. But he keeps his job and his position.

One year later, I published my first website.

Two years later, I took my first client.

Three years later the company shut its doors, and I took a leap of faith and began doing web development full-time.

I don’t know where I would be today if not for all the disappointing things that have happened to me over the years.

Many people have told me No, and it has always made me evaluate how I look at myself and the world. I have always found that I have more power than I realize.

Web design has been a way for me to build a door to a meaningful life, where no passage existed before.

The culture of web designers and developers is still often strange to me. Many people that I meet have never done anything else but web development.

This used to intimidate me, but it doesn’t anymore. I’m still early along in my overall path, in my life and career. I realize that many things I saw as my weaknesses a few years ago are actually my strengths. I bet there are lots of other people who feel the same way right now.

My thoughts about myself changed, nothing else.

I stopped worrying about fitting the mold that I imagined others wanted to see in this new environment. I learned to be confident, and that it’s OK if I don’t know everything in this extremely vast field.

Becoming a web developer was one piece of a puzzle. I gradually realized that if you don’t persist in dreaming, in believing in yourself, or doing the work every day…you won’t achieve the goals you set for yourself.

This past November marked my second year doing web development full-time. It hasn’t always been easy, but worthwhile paths seldom are easy.

Good things come to you when you face your fears and walk towards them anyway. Keep dreaming, keep believing. Keep kicking down walls.

Read more inspirational stories from real life at
https://medium.com/in-your-own-words