I for sure ain’t no fortune teller, but back in 2017, man, I remember looking at my job situation and thinking, ‘Something’s gotta give.’ I was stuck, felt like I was just spinning my wheels, day in and day out, doing the same old stuff that didn’t really light a fire in me anymore. I’d been at that company for a good few years, built a decent routine, knew all the ropes, but it was just… comfortable. And comfortable usually means you ain’t growing, right? My gut was telling me I was ripe for a change, not just a small one, but a real shake-up.
I guess you could say my own “predictions” for my career at that point were a mix of hope and sheer frustration. I was hoping for something more challenging, something that would actually get me thinking again, building something new. But the frustration was real – every day felt like I was just pushing paper, even if it was digital paper. I felt undervalued, not in a money way, but in a ‘my brain’s capable of more than this’ kind of way. I wanted to build stuff, something tangible, something that mattered more than just hitting quarterly targets for some corporate giant.
The Push That Got Me Going
Then, around mid-2017, a project landed on my desk. It was supposed to be a ‘big innovation,’ a new internal tool that was gonna revolutionize how we did things. Sounded great, right? Except the whole thing was a mess from day one. I mean, a real cluster. Management had big ideas but no clue how to execute, and the team was stretched thin, trying to use ancient tech to build something modern. I watched as it slowly, painfully, became clear this thing was gonna flop. And it did. Hard. Seeing all that effort, all that potential, just fizzle out because of bad planning and a lack of proper tools, that was it for me.
That failure, ironically, was my kick in the pants. It made me realize I couldn’t just sit there and complain. I had to go out and learn how things should be done, how to build something properly, from the ground up, with the right tech. I decided then and there I was gonna teach myself a whole new skillset. No more waiting for some perfect opportunity to land in my lap. I was gonna make my own.
The Grind Begins: Learning and Building
So, I started digging. My evenings and weekends disappeared. I dove headfirst into learning about web development, specifically backend stuff. I picked up Python first because everyone said it was easy to get into, then got curious about Go. I watched a ton of tutorials, read endless articles, and just started messing around with code. It was like going back to school, but way harder because no one was telling me what to do or when to do it. It was just me, my laptop, and a ton of error messages.
I remember trying to build my first simple API. Took me forever just to figure out how to get a basic “Hello, World!” to show up in a browser after hitting an endpoint. Then came the database connections, the authentication, trying to make things talk to each other. It was slow, frustrating work. There were nights I wanted to just throw my laptop across the room. I’d hit a bug, spend hours trying to fix it, only to realize I’d typed a single character wrong. Man, those were some tough lessons. I built little projects, mostly for myself, just to see if I could make them work. A tiny task manager, a dummy e-commerce backend, just practicing, practicing, practicing.
I started noticing how inefficient my current company’s systems were, how much better things could be. It gave me a real fire, a belief that I was on the right track. I wasn’t just learning code; I was learning how to think differently, how to solve problems in a much more effective way. It wasn’t about quick fixes; it was about building robust, scalable solutions.
The Realization and The Pivot
After about a year of this intense self-study, maybe even bleeding into early 2018, I felt like I actually had something. Not an expert, far from it, but I could do stuff. I’d built enough small applications that I was confident I could tackle a real-world project. My confidence grew, and so did my itch to actually use these new skills professionally. I started looking around, not for the same old corporate drone job, but for roles that actually involved building. I updated my resume, highlighting the personal projects I’d slaved over, even though they were just for me.
It took a few tries, some rejections, but eventually, I landed an interview for a backend developer role at a smaller, much more agile company. I walked in there, probably looking a bit rough around the edges from all the late nights, but I had conviction. I showed them the stuff I’d built, talked about my frustrations with inefficient systems, and my drive to learn and improve. I think they saw the passion, the sheer grit, more than just a polished resume. I got the job. It was a pay cut initially, actually, but I didn’t care. I was finally gonna be building things, learning with a real team, doing what I felt I was meant to do.
Looking back, my own “predictions” for 2017 were pretty vague – just a feeling that I needed a change. What actually happened was a complete overhaul of my skills, my mindset, and my entire career trajectory. It wasn’t some cosmic prophecy; it was just me getting fed up and deciding to take the reins. Best decision I ever made.
