11 september 2018
I’m exhausted and I should sleep, but I’m acting like a stubborn child. If I go to sleep, then I have to get up and go to work. Which, no. I don’t want to do that.
It’s been especially hard this year to get up and go. Spending a weekend getting inspired by creative people doing work they (mostly) love has me feeling even more reluctant to go back to the bad place.
An added layer of difficulty probably comes from the fact that the last time I attended this conference, I’d just quit a dead-end job. So I think part of my brain is like, "Ok! This is when we get to bail, right?" And I have to break it to her that ain’t happening. At least not yet.
I did bring home about 5 new books from my trip to Portland, a worn-out stomach from digesting all the good foods, and maybe some ideas of new things to build or old hobbies to pick up.
I don’t know yet how I’m going to escape the sad office life. I’m working on it.
Ready to not be sad and anxious anymore, okay?!
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07 september 2017
It's Wednesday.
Last night was Class 1 of 8 in a monthlong course on algorithms and data structures. That's not a lot of time for a lot of
information. I'm attempting to compress a semester-long course into a month, which means I'm also attempting to adjust my
expectations for how I'll feel by October. But I'm trying hard to make it my top priority in terms of time management (WHY THE FCK
ARE YOU WRITING HERE THEN) and mental energy.
I was nervous going into this. A+DS are a core part of computer science, and more superficially, programming interviews at
engineering-centered companies. My fear of whiteboarding and lack of smerts about binary search trees has kept me from applying to
such ~dream jobs~.
But I think just wanting to work somewhere dreamy wasn't enough to motivate me. Now instead of some sort of status, I mainly want
to learn how to do cooler things with code, and solve more interesting problems than centering things on a page. That motivation
makes learning this stuff really fun. Still hard, but less torturous.
The first class covered problem solving techniques, including Polya's method from his book How to Solve It (required reading for
this course). We also got into Big-O notation, which is one of the few topics in this area I've studied and understand fairly
well. Mostly. That just means this will definitely be the easiest class all month, and I wouldn't say it was easy. There were
plenty of opportunities for me to engage in negative inner dialogue about myself (a habit I'm trying to break), and second-guess
myself constantly, holding back ideas and answers from the rest of the class. Goal for next class, "SAY THE THING YOU'RE
THINKING!!"
Okay there's so much homework to be done, on top of wrapping up a freelance project and sleeping before the day job.
._.
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