Just the Beginning

I don’t expect anyone to read this blog. As a self-taught developer (currently working through the hell known as JavaScript), I kind of hope that no one ever does read this. I don’t know that I’ll ever be fully free from imposter syndrome, but the more I talk to people, the more I realize there is a LOT that I don’t understand.

My background is actually in Sports Medicine. Bachelors and Masters, in fact. I don’t think I truly knew what I wanted to do with my life, but that seemed like the safe option, I guess. It took me almost 10 years in Sports Medicine to figure out that’s not what I wanted to do…but I did have woodworking. And damn, do I love making things with my hands. And I’m pretty decent. Even tried starting my own business (spoiler - it did not go well). But today, I’m working as a craftsman, making some nice things, but I also want more. I want to do woodworking as a hobby. Make my own things, and not simply make the things that people ask me to make. Which leads me to web development.

Several years back, a high school classmate and I created a business aimed at Healthcare Technology Management. We needed a website, so I attempted to learn HTML and CSS to throw together a static website. I learned a lot, but I’m the end, we needed to hire someone, because it needed someone who was a fullstack developer…and my static page took a week to create and it…was…awful. Like, painfully awful. But I was hooked.

![Epoxy River table] (cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/..)

Fast forward to now and after making the decision to dissolve our Healthcare Tech company, I wanted to try my hand again at web development. I'm a bit of a technophile, but I think the biggest draw for me, is the ability to create something out of nothing. Learning to connect different languages to make a webpage look good, and then make it efficient, and then make it do some really badass stuff....and then go back and refactor it, because it's actually not efficient at all and you learned a new language that takes uses fewer lines of code. The learning never stops. New languages, new features, new frameworks...it's a lot to digest, but I'm a nerd and feel nothing but excitement over the possibilities.

I want to build things. It doesn't have to be ground-breaking, or change the world (I mean, that would be pretty kick ass), but just something I built from what I've learned along the way. It's going to take some time to get to the point where I feel comfortable saying I'm a developer, but when tech has the ability to provide something more for my family and myself, that's what pushes me on the days that I'm cursing JavaScript. So, that's my story. I want to be able to provide some type of useful content going forward, but this is mostly so I can ingrain what I am learning along the way.

I'll be on Twitter, and you can go through my GitHub and tear my code apart, if that's more your speed. I'm not going to get upset if anyone feels the need to try to knock down my code. I decided I don't have time to give a shit about that. I'll take what I can get from it, and continue learning and trying to get better. So that's my story, and now I have to figure out the rest of this blog stuff and what I should actually be posting about. Let me know if you have any recommendations.