The Rut I Once Called Home

This past Monday was my 36th birthday and my second birthday during the pandemic. Normally, birthdays are almost a non-event in my life — years of grinding out the days as an office admin and pouring my soul into my nights and weekends as a theater artist have trained me to sacrifice all sorts of “fun activities” for the work. Friends and family have become accustomed to hearing the phrase, “I can’t, I have rehearsal.”

This birthday felt different.

Was I even 35? Very few people have witnessed any of my accomplishments this year and oh god is that how I’ve been evaluating my life’s progress? I don’t have time for an existential crisis, I’m learning software engineering!

This feeling is a familiar one: the panic, the imposter syndrome, the overwhelm — my neurodivergent brain spinning me off to distractions from the dread I associate with any attempt to take care of the work I should be focusing on. This is where I run out of time, fail to meet the deadline, and ask for forgiveness. This is how I self-sabotage. This is how I fail.

Except this time I didn’t. This time I sat down and did a couple of meditations on stress. I journaled. I asked for help. I used the tools that I learned since my 35th birthday to change the narrative for myself.

My project for this module is functional. It’s a locally hosted Sinatra web application that uses Active Record to build a database and employs models with has_many and belongs_to methods. It does not (yet) have the streamlined user experience built off of a clever narrative like I want all of my projects to.That standard of perceived excellence, though admirable, was holding me back this time as I realize it has on so many occasions before.

Still, my project meets the requirements set forth by Flatiron School. Though it may not amaze and impress the objective user yet, I realized that wasn’t the goal.

For me it’s a huge accomplishment. One I will be building off of for years to come.