Happy St Patrick’s day! Yay to all the wonderful stereotypical holiday trappings. Yay Guinness! Yay colcannon! Yay green!
It’s also me and Ryan’s 6 year anniversary, so a great excuse to post this cute picture from a friend’s wedding last winter.
Happy anniversary Ryan! I look forward to six more years of being unmarried and child free with you-LOL. 🙂
So, it’s March. I’m feeling kind of strange, to be honest.
In November I had the excitement of quitting my job, starting my bootcamp and traveling to Japan. In December I went to New Orleans and celebrated the holidays. During January I freelanced, effectively buying myself more time to study and job hunt. I also spent a little of that money sprucing up my apartment.
February. Oh dear February. The great grey ghost of February. After working full time the month before, I felt “behind” in my bootcamp, whatever the hell that means for a mostly self-paced program. Behind the other people in my cohort, behind my targeted end date, and worst of all, behind in my knowledge.
I started the month determined to make up for lost time. Most of this was psychological, but numbers don’t lie: I studied more during the first week of February than I did the entire month of January. And this was with my mom visiting!  Quite a few days were wasted with review just to get back into the groove.
So last month I barreled right on through, putting myself on a stricter schedule, working day in and day out, glued to the chair, skipping lunch like a regular 9-5 job. I’m feeling okay about my progress, but looking into March and knowing that it’s probably going to be like this until the very end… I’m starting to feel a little nuts, honestly. The end is not in sight! When does it end???
All of the usual self-care suggestions are helping me to not go off the rails (insert ruby joke here): eat well, sleep enough, drink in moderation, see friends, exercise. However, what’s really holding me together is making more connections with the programming community.
Anyways, there’s no great resolution to this post. All I can say is that if we’re friends, please reach out and try to schedule coffee/bowling/a drink/a movie/dear god something with me. I’m going a little crazy over here.
Happy new year! Here we go again…
Normally when I reflect on the past year, I have so many feelings. This new year’s eve I wasn’t feeling particularly reflective, wistful or nostalgic. I wasn’t feeling much of anything, to be honest. 2015 was a pretty good year, but I don’t mind its passing. Still, I can easily point to the bright spots.
Relationships
Despite being majorly stressed out and heads down in my studies nearly all year, it was a good year for my relationships. I made new friends from the programming classes I took, rekindled old friendships, and deepened my existing relationships. I am really thankful for growth in this area in 2015.
Health
I gave up on wanting to do a chinup, but through the magic of running and strength training, I actually got kinda buff/thin in 2015, getting down to high school weight, which was a bit of a shock. Emotionally I was doing well, and had found a bit of stability and happiness in the pursuit of a goal. The Wellbutrin didn’t hurt either, not gonna lie. Oh, and I also finally got my wisdom teeth out. It was my first surgery!
Work
In the spring I pushed even harder to incorporate coding into my job, and that opened a few doors for me. Eventually I walked out one of those doors and on to another adventure (okay that was cheesey but I had to). I saved up enough money to quit my job and enroll in a coding bootcamp. Where that goes, well we’ll see. I’m trying to stay optimistic.
Travel
In 2015 I visited Burma, Austin, Shanghai, Tokyo, New Orleans, along with a few short trips in the Bay Area.  Embarrassingly, I did not make my resolution of seeing my family 4-5x in 2015. I did not see them at all. But you know what, my family can come and visit me too! I’m choosing not to feel guilty about that.
2016
So, what do you do for resolutions when you aren’t feeling inspired, guilty or fat?
Okay, that was really long. 2016, let’s do this!
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve already seen this, so apologies!  Sharing here for my mom, who is the biggest TinTin fan ever, and most certainly not on the ‘gram.  🙂
Oh Halloween. It’s come and gone, and now here we are barreling right into the holiday season. I was incredibly boring this year and on Halloween night I didn’t go to any haunted houses, silent movies, raging bars, pumpkin patches, or any other such debauchery. The stars just didn’t align, and also I was SO FREAKIN’ TIRED.
I did however have a costume that I felt good about! I love Halloween, but I don’t love paying a lot for a costume that I will only wear for one day out of the year. I’m on a budget, so this year I picked a costume that would minimize my spending – TinTin :D. Most everything was in my wardrobe – I just needed to buy a stuffed dog and a blue sweater.
If you ever want to be TinTin as well, it’s a super easy formula. From CostumePlaybook.com:ÂÂ
It occurred to me the other day that I’ve been learning programming for about a year now! Happy code-a-versary to me!
About a year ago I wanted to go deeper into data sciencey stuff at work. After reading a ton of DIY curriculum guides, it seemed that there was no way around it: I was going to have to learn to code, probably in Python. I’d used SQL a bit in my previous job, but it was a bit of a bore, to be honest.
In the past year I’ve tried learning so many different ways. At first I used online tutorials and taught myself on the job. That was slow goings, with small victories few and far between. However things really came together this spring when I took a Python class at the local community college. Hmm… it’s funny how much you get done when there are deadlines!
After my class I was able to do a lot more on my own, especially at work. Recently I got interested in web development, so I signed up for an intensive front-end web dev course. The class was 6:30 – 9:30pm, from Monday to Friday. I felt like I had no life for an entire month. I woke up early to get some exercise in. Every night I came home exhausted around ten. I had a beer, watched some tv, and went straight to bed. What time I had off on the weekends I spent catching up on cooking, cleaning and more studying. It was hectic and stressful.
And yet… I learned so much. I don’t regret taking the course, even with the *ahem* high fee and time commitment. Or maybe that’s just me rationalizing the expense since it’s too late. :) Now that I’m back on my own and without a set study program, I’m trying to figure out my next steps.  I thought that after trying all these different methods, I’d have a better idea of what was working… but not really.
A little googling turned up the VARK questionnaire, which claims to help you identify how you learn best. It looks like I am a read/write and kinesthetic learner. The other options are aural and visual learner, btw. Read/write is apparently good for traditional schooling, with note-taking and lots of reading and handouts. Ah, that’s why I like regular classes. Kinesthetic = learning by doing, which I was pretty much doing with my work projects.
So, I have way too many options for continued learning:
It’s honestly really overwhelming, and why I seem to gravitate toward traditional classroom settings. Somebody just tell me what to do! For now, I’ll just be plodding along as usual… Whatever I do, time will pass. Might as well learn something, even if I’m unsure if I’m going about it the “right” way.
