Falling off the face of the earth; drinking from a firehose.

It’s been more than a week. I’m definitely not fantastic at staying updated – honestly each day is more of “a day where I remembered to document what I was doing”. I think 100daysofcode is a nice guide and symbol of consistency, but it’s not something that I can realistically do. Some days, you just need a clean break from coding. And that’s fine.

Drinking from the firehose

But anyway, the past week has felt like a blender. I started working on the frontend for a volunteer project, and had to touch React for the first time (or maybe the 1.5th time). Working with another volunteer (a much more experienced dev who I’ve never met and whose actual identity I have no clue of - such is the internet :P) who wrote the backend meant that I had to figure out how to work with Flask (to test locally), and also set up Node. They wanted me to get some experience deploying apps and dealing with real world concerns like load balancing, but I haven’t managed to get it up yet…

She’s in her freelance era

On 4 May, Wednesday, I started my first day of working for a web design + dev agency that focuses on Shopify sites. I’ve never touched Shopify in my life (besides checking things out). I’m learning to accept the discomfort of starting a new job, learning a whole new set of norms + tech stack for managing work + syntax (Shopify does use Liquid [ok actually they made it], which I have touched a little bit because Jekyll uses it too). I’m blundering and hopefully reducing my learning:doing ratio (in favour of spending more time doing) over time. But anyway, it’s 4 hours a day and pays me twice as much as any of my law internships ever did (which is more of a testament to how poorly law interns are paid).

Changing lanes

After finishing 4 years of university, picking up this freelance thing felt like the first step in confirming my change of paths. I studied law, but won’t be practicing as a lawyer as I genuinely don’t think I can hack it. Some people can handle constant stress and 12-hour days, but not me. I’ve got other priorities like my health and possible family caregiving stuff.

Ideally, I’ll be able to do dev work that also taps on my legal training – like building tools for legal ecosystem folks (research, practice managements, blahblah). But for now, I’m just going to focus on getting my foot in the door, feeding myself, and learning.

There’s a kind of shame associated with not doing what you were trained for, but it’s kind of natural to change. Optimistically viewed, it means that my time in university was genuinely transformative. I’m a very different person from my 19 year old self now. The version of me 4 years from now will also probably feel like a whole different person.