Hello and welcome back. I’m finally getting another post in. It’s been difficult to stay consistent with the writing. I’ve just been focusing on creating some content for myself by learning a little bit each day. The certification is in beta, so it is being constantly updated with new content. I am constantly having to backtrack and complete new steps within modules. This is good to reinforce knowledge, and to get a more thorough understanding. My progress has been substantial, and instrumental in cultivating the mind for me so far in 2024.
Working towards a goal is important to actually progressing, so it’s quite natural to work towards the certification. It’s been a bit harder than I initially thought, though. I was perhaps a bit too optimistic because of the amount of time I’ve put into learning JavaScript. JS takes consistent work to thoroughly understand and utilize it. I’ve practiced a lot with arrow functions, using callback functions, different string and array methods and manipulating objects. I’m significantly improved over a short time-frame.
Cultivating the mind
Since writing last I’ve completed another certification project. Before this the course brought me through building a to-do app, and a decimal to binary converter. In the to-do app I learned about localStorage, and with the decimal to binary converter I refreshed my skills with recursion. The certification project was the true test, though. I got through it. Similarly to the Palindrome Checker project it seemed like I would be able to hard-code most of it using simple DOM manipulation.
This was the case until it started asking to check for included values — direct assignment wasn’t enough. It took me a minute, but I realized a switch statement would work perfectly. I ended up finishing off the rest of the project! It feels great to be able to properly utilize the tools I’ve been given to achieve a goal.
I’ve been working hard to increase my physical fitness. Training for the last year has definitely improved my health. After this success, it only seems right to try to improve in other areas of my life now. With consistency and attention to detail I’ve been able to improve myself, and it is these principles that I hope to apply to my work as a developer. It’s providing me with the necessary motivation, and the will to put in the work needed. Cultivating the mind is an ongoing process that takes a lot of commitment and the ability to make tough decisions to better yourself.
Looking ahead
I have a lot of work in-front of me, but I’m hopeful with a good attitude and some persistence I’ll be able to finish off this certification shortly. If you’re not sure what certification I’m talking about it’s freeCodeCamp’s JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures certification. After that, I’m looking to add a GitHub certification, and learn how to use Figma. With these skills I will try to get some more professional experience, and start applying to various job opportunities.
I’m slowly making my way towards my goals, but making steady progress nonetheless. The inevitable job hunt grind seems all that much closer now. With grit and determination I’ll pull myself to the finish line, and make a career out of this growing hobby of mine. It’s been a long time since I’ve started, which has increased my urgency and intensity. Multiple positive factors are colliding to give me the best opportunity for success.
It’s fun to work on something new each day for me right now. Working through this certification is keeping me on my toes and keeping JavaScript knowledge fresh in my mind. Since last writing on this post I’ve completed a couple more modules; creating a spam filter and a number sorter. The spam filter provided some practice with regex, and the number sorter saw us implementing sorting algorithms.
Short-term goals
I need some smaller goals to help me focus. I’m looking to make rapid progress towards finishing this certification, and then hoping to build some professional experience shortly. It’s exciting to almost be at a point where I can consider myself a professional, but I have a lot of work in-front of me yet to get to a steady income stream. Hopefully with some persistence I can get a few clients to work with. Cultivating the mind is a priority to put myself in the proper headspace, and ready to pour myself into what I’m learning.
Like I’ve said before, I’d like to finish the JS cert, do a GitHub cert, and learn how to use Figma as well. After this, I should have the necessary tools to take on some freelance jobs. I’ll be able to convince clients that I’m worthy of their time — that I can complete jobs quickly and with quality. Though I am hoping this will be enough to secure some work in the short-term, I’m stilling eyeing the next certification on freeCodeCamp — the front-end libraries cert.
I have some familiarity with jQuery, and have implemented it on my personal site — warrendolben.com. It is definitely something that I will try to attain in the future, and will look to start progress towards it soon. It will only help to speed up my workflow and allow me to take on a wider variety of projects with the ability to complete them faster. This really is the next step in a logical progression of skills. It will be the last one on freeCodeCamp that is fully pertinent to my professional development. I should be able to get a substantial amount of work after completing it, and easing myself into the freelance workplace.
Currently working on
So I’ve made a decent amount of progress in a month, though not quite as much as I’d like. I just finished up working on a stats calculator — getting familiar with some different methods, and ways of calculating stats. Before that I had to go back to the start of the certification because a new module was added. I had some fun creating the pyramid generator, which would create a pyramid made of out #. I’m currently working on building a spreadsheet and learning about functional programming.
It’s important to keep things in perspective for me. I could easily get frustrated that my progress is too slow, but I’m confident I’m taking the right steps and spending appropriate time to develop my skills and succeed. I’m eager to get back out there and start submitting proposals for jobs. Soon enough I will. I need to remind myself that these certs and knowledge I am now trying to attain is worth it. I will eventually achieve these things, and they will help me.
I’m still slowly grinding towards the end of the novel I’m reading. I’m looking forward to finishing up the story and moving on to some more technical information. I have a new text book I bought for the express purpose of pouring over for hours on end hopefully to some avail. It was the most relevant book for the technologies I am studying and employing. Hopefully it will bring me some deeper understanding, and I’ll cement some details, or pick up something I hadn’t noticed or fully understood before.
Positive change
I’m happy to say that the unfortunate event that I referenced in my last post is on its way to being resolved after about a month, which is all I could hope for. It has me in a positive state of mind — believing that good things can happen to me and that I can affect positive change on my life. It feels good, and I’m trying to ride that momentum and get some things accomplished.
My living situation is in flux, though we have leads, and a little bit of hope. If I can start finally getting some jobs as a web developer, then that would help our situation a bit, and give us more stability. I’m eager for this to happen, as our lives haven’t been very stable for the past six odd years we’ve been living together. We’ve been poor, and have struggled to pay bills/rent. We’ve faced eviction before, and had difficult situations with land lords.
I’ve got a positive outlook, and enough hope for us to find a place, though. I’m sure we’ll do it. Otherwise we may be living in a van for a month or so. I’d really like to live at a physical address, however, though my girlfriend doesn’t necessarily agree. We are exploring several options for renting, though, and I’m optimistic. I need a physical address to hold all my worldly possessions — mainly my desktop computer and a bike trainer. Cultivating the mind is something that I strive to do and that a physical address may help with.
Cultivating the mind
I’m excited to continue working towards these goals, and believe that progress will continually become easier. Consistent time is the only way to achieve anything, and with that time increased proficiency will come. Giving myself opportunities to learn is important and essential to developing these skills, and the reason why I will become a skilled web developer. Cultivating the mind is something that is necessary to progressing. You need to put yourself in the right frame of mind, and give yourself the best chance of success by investing in yourself and your health.
Cultivating the mind properly requires you to provide it with a variety of stimuli. In order to give yourself the best chance of absorbing information it’s helpful to utilize a variety of information sources and modes. If you can read something, do something, listen to something, and teach something there’s a much higher chance that you really understand that information. This is the crux of why I have created this blog. It’s extremely helpful to me.
I’m excited to see where it goes and what relationships I can make along the way. Hopefully I can find some people to learn from and with along the way and to create fun memories while learning to code. Cultivating the mind will put me in the space that I need to be in to create those core memories and share more of myself with people.
The coming weeks
These next few weeks will bring a lot of change into my life, but I’m ready to take it on. I’m going to continue learning, and try to get some professional experience as well. It will be interesting to see if I can apply the knowledge I’ve learned in these past couple months directly to my work. I think I’ve become a better web developer during this time, and I’m eager to show this.
I’m going to be looking for people on X to follow more closely and become more invested in their journey. Hopefully through humor, and shared stories we can become close to each other and benefit one another. I’ve built a similar size audience to my Instagram account, but with mostly strangers interested in web development instead of actual friends and acquaintances. It will be interesting to see what kind of engagement I can achieve with this.
Thanks for stopping by. I’d love to hear what you think of this post if you’ve made it this far. Feel free to leave links to your own blogs or ideas about project collaborations. Thanks again.
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