I originally wrote this on my personal blog, but it’s about my struggles with my coding program, so I’m crossposting here as well. 

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.

• I talk to the people in my program pretty much every day. They know the struggle. We rarely meet up, but every time we do it’s a positive boost.
• I finally set up my programming focused blog, although I haven’t written much, and yeah I know I should.
• As the third prong, I’m trying really hard to push myself to go to local meetups and study groups. This is San Francisco, so there is always something going on. Hitting up 1 or 2 meetups per week should be easily doable. Unfortunately I haven’t gone to enough events to start recognizing people, so it’s like starting all over again at each meetup, which makes me anxious. I’m trying to get buddies with similar interests to go with me, but sometimes I will have to go alone, and I will feel awkward as hell.

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.