I think that’s it: I don’t hate Mondays - I am just scared of them! Thanks Buzz :)
I embrace changes, but not Mondays… they follow after 2 days of guilt free relaxation. So today after my planning, I realized it is not Monday’s fault! I have accused many Fridays of being Mondays. It is just my inability to reset every week, end my sprint without leaving leftovers and not punish myself for slacking when leaving the office.
When Software is passion, is very hard to set limits between yourself and your laptop. My hands since I was 7 have been on a keyboard for a big part of my day. I wish I had someone to mentor me in the age of “no internet on a tiny greek island”. I would definitely spend more quality time with learning programming logic and stop mixing cables/ playing with mobo or exploring the internet in a wrong and unproductive way.
I felt the ultimate badass burning CDs with Nero, downloading songs P2P and making the covers using Word! All the kids were willing to get the newest compilations for 5euros ;) #hackerkid #piratekid #bornToDoBusiness
No one thought I would ever become a Software Engineer… I didn’t think either, until I decided I want to be one. Even now I feel weird when I introduce myself back home and people stare at me like “Huh?”. I think the weirdest moment was during a university project presentation: I was told to make very very clear and say multiples times that my team was girls-only. When I asked “why? what’s so special about it?”, I think I got the answer that made me the saddest ever –> “A woman in Greece can be a teacher, a doctor, a secretary…in the eyes of the people here she cannot do Hardware or code”. Not only I didn’t mention it, I involved all my teammates in the presentation and behaved like this is just what we do and nothing special. I feel it worked better than showing off about something that should be taken for granted.
I can imagine how discouraging the environment must have been for most of the girls my age back then. I was forced to study something that I didn’t choose, just because “IT and Engineering have too many men already doing their job well enough”. But hopefully we were only the exceptions. And I have found many of these lovely exceptions around me and I am so proud of them that believed they can try it and succeed when nobody else did.
I already accidentally devoted my whole post to this topic, so I will just finish it. History has showed me that the more you doubt yourself, the less chances you get to make the dream come true. Personally, once I concentrated on what I love and chased the dream, I feel I created the doors that were missing in my path. The problem is that women fear failure and this is what I am fighting against.
But in parallel I will fight my personal doubts on coding with a pet project. This is gonna be my Scala baby and it is gonna an endless failing/stress-free experimentation.
Today, I forgave myself and planned my week more strictly. The tasks got concrete and more targeted. I feel already creative and happy with what I chose to learn this week: Scala (of course), more Bash and unit testing. I want to aim for more team sessions between the apprentices/crafters and get some more insights on how the people around me stay productive :)
Have a great week!