So It’s Been A Second: the Best Kind of Life Update
I sort of disappeared off the face of the internet, but for good reason.
Hi. It’s May. I’m alive! And tonight, bedtime with the kids went smoothly enough that I actually have the bandwidth to smash out a quick life update. I have a million bajillion things I want to say, and only a little bit of time to try and come up with something coherent.
As it turns out, the wildcard life update is a go — I’m in last third of one of the most intense four months of my life. Tomorrow I have a sprint demo — the third of four. I get to show off what I worked on for the past two weeks. Specifically: I changed the header, footer, and profile page of a pretend sports apparel website my team is working on, I added fake users to the database, I added a protected website route to prevent website users who aren’t logged in from viewing the profile page area, and I added the ability to update and save profile information, complete with validation — if any of the fields have incorrect input (a name with a special character, for example), the changes are prevented from going through and error messages show up on the fields that need to be changed.
Guys, this is hard. I’ve experienced rock-bottom, sob-on-the-bed hopelessness. I’ve felt like quitting so many times in the past couple months. We’ve lost four people from our cohort so far — not because they’ve been booted, but because they themselves have decided to leave. The initial part of the program was hard, yes, but the fun kind of hard. Starting the group project portion, which is what I’m nearing the end of now, is like going down a waterfall with an angry dragon waiting for you at the bottom (to paraphrase, poorly, one of the trainers). The imposter syndrome is real.
The good news is, Catalyte is absolutely fantastic. Everyone who goes through the program experiences the same imposter syndrome, and the trainers make sure that everyone knows that. The support is incredible. We have bi-monthly (is that the right term?) one-on-ones with our TA’s. The training staff is approachable and everyone is so, so helpful. My current TA — I can’t say enough good things. The man is a saint. Truly. A genius, and a saint. Complete with renaissance-cherub hair.
And my cohort. Oh, my cohort! I love these people. We started out as a group of fourteen or fifteen (?) military spouses — all ladies save for our beloved Orange. As a whole, we are intense. We don’t let work go un-done. We had to split into two groups for the group project portion, and my group is seven Instant Teams members, along with two Catalyte guys. The amount of dedication we have to this damned project is absurd. We won’t let cards not make it across the line come demo time. It is our pretend product (project?) owner’s job to give us a hard time, and we’re still unable to let ourselves fail. We’re ridiculous, and I love us.
And you know what else? I love this. This software development stuff. It’s slightly nightmarish, and also so freaking fun. It’s a massive challenge for my brain every single day, and when I actually get it, the high is unreal. I’ve started unintentionally viewing the world through a coding lens. Liesl is up crying at night? My sleep-addled brain thinks there must be a bug in her code, and I just have to find it. I’m so excited to finish up and, God willing, because that will be another massive hurdle, pass the final project — and go out into the Real World and get a Grown-Up Job. This is the challenge I never knew I needed.
Okay. It’s 9:02, i.e., quittin’ time. But one final thought: Jarrod left literally the week before the training began. We still don’t quite know when he’ll get back, but it’s looking like it may be around Father’s Day weekend. Meanwhile, my final project is scheduled to begin the 6th of June and finish on the 16th. You do the math. He’ll have been gone literally from start to finish of this program. It’s been hard being a parent through all this, but hoo boy do I have good things to say about Alexis, the woman I hired to take care of Liesl and get the kids to and from school. In some ways I am glad he’s been gone. He’s not around to distract me, and I get the nights entirely to myself. But also, like…I could use another adult in this house. One person is not meant to parent three small children on their own!
But that’s another story for another post. Right now it’s time to hit the snooze sack. I’ve got thirteen points worth of work to demo tomorrow morning. And probably a celebratory cocktail to drink after that’s through.
mins
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