I'm so sorry I forgot to post this yesterday. I will make up with a post during the week..
Every post like this starts with, "When we were little we were told we could be anything. We could do anything," but that's a lie. All of us adults know it. There are a few we strive and succeed at becoming their dream, some of them without feeling after all they've accomplished. Most of us, I would think, end up somewhere else. Maybe not at the very bottom but not where we expected to belong.
I am one of those people. I never wanted to go to college to be honest. It was expected. Maybe a figment of my imagination but I felt the pressure. If I was going to get anywhere, I needed to go to college. The problem is that I was like any other college student. Completely unprepared and under-taught. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I jumped from Interior Design/Japanese, Fine Arts/Japanese, Japanese/Pre-Vet, Photography to finally, either Computer Science or Anthropology. I took a class that defined my passion and I choose Anthropology. Not the right choice for the market. But the right choice for my soul. I discovered so much during those brief years, I discovered my passion for learning. My sense of accomplishment. I felt like what I wrote mattered. I just needed to settle on a topic to go back to school for. However, that didn't happen. I needed a job. A non-dead-end job that I could feel something for. I decided to go back to school for software engineering. Something I was always interested in but never tested myself on.
How I passed? I don't know. I put in as much grit as I could but I don't feel like I learned a damn thing. I still can't code. I know how to do loops, I know the basic functions but when to use them? No clue. how to write software? No clue. I can make a pretty interface and I can make HTML sites if I try hard enough but backend, the thing I really wanted to learn, never clicked for me.
Then I ended up on an internship far too under-qualified. Apparently my employers liked my demeanor but my potential was never realized. I never learned python and I wasn't far along enough in coding or personal coding to know what I was doing. They threw me small bones and I couldn't chew on them. Unceremoniously I was let go. One of the biggest let-gos of my life. I really thought those people had my back. We had some serious moments. But it wasn't meant to be and I went along my way.
Eventually all my hard work, all those hours of searching lead to a pivot. I applied for an internship as a WordPress intern at my current company. I thought, 'hey I can easily learn WordPress, how hard could it be?' but found myself interviewing with a team and a job title I have never heard of before. It's like an in-betweener job. Something you don't have to be code heavy on but a lot of responsibility rests on your shoulders. I'm used to responsibility, talking to clients and organization. These are all desired soft skills. It's hard for me to believe there aren't more better suited candidates but so many people don't possess those skills.
So here I am, doing my IT related job, wishing i could go back to school. I never thought I would wish to go back to school. But there is so much more I want to learn. I want to know how to speak different languages, I want to learn the fundamentals of fine arts, I want to expand my knowledge and pick a thesis and write that journal about it. I want to continue academia. But I also want to grow and expend on my IT experience. I want coding to 'click' with me and I want to become the expert on many things.
I'm torn between worlds. Three of them actually. Art, Anthropology and Computer Science. I want to be great at all these things but I just feel mediocre at all of them. I don't create nearly as often as I should, weekly if not daily. I don't read journals of write opinions or follow up on new discoveries in Anthropology. Code STILL hasn't 'clicked' and I only am an expert on specific tools. Some that probably aren't even used elsewhere. Who knows?
The point is I'll be 30 soon enough and I won't feel accomplished. Something has to change. I have to want something enough to make it work. Personally I want all these things to work and I try to hone and improve my skills every second I have the energy to. Do I always read a scholarly journal when I get a free moment at work? No. Do I always start and finish a new art project when I get home? No. Do I strive to learn a new language for even a little bit of time a day? No. Do I try to code a new program whenever the chance arises? No. I don't do these things and I have no one to blame but myself. To make myself a well rounded person I need to force myself to see the reality and just DO these things regardless of where my heart or mind is. If I lead they should follow.
So in summary, I have not perfected an art skill but I will continue to strive to create. I have not written about my thesis but I will try to follow the articles that pop up on anthropology reddit because I can't go back to school, at least not right now. I will force myself to write small programs until it 'clicks' and I understand coding enough to start solving and automating processes that need to be automated.
I will make it. I just need to take it one day at a time, like my bipolar. Don't look back and pine. Don't worry too far in the future. Do what I can do right now and be happy with what I have accomplished and what I will accomplish regardless of the time it takes.
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