TL;DR: This was a very long hiatus, I started to code again, and I’m going to a tech summit!!

The last UI design I did was back in June and more than a few things have occurred since then. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know when I’m dealing with a multitude of personal issues, I’m not the best at creating anything. Ideas don’t come, the juices don’t flow, and the motivation is dangerously low because my attention and focus are directed somewhere else.

I interviewed for a job at the end of June and I didn’t get it, because the company said they were going to go with a more experienced candidate. Fair enough. I went through three rounds of interviews and they were video interviews. Nerve wracking, I tell you. Quite frankly, it led me into a funk that lasted for a little over a month. I had an idea that I wasn’t going to get the job based on how the last interview went, but I wasn’t prepared to struggle with my own insecurities and issues for over a month. It wasn’t until August that I felt in somewhat of a better mood to socialize.

Since I had time on my hands, I figured I should be productive. I decided to dive back into the FreeCodeCamp exercises that I had abandoned throughout the interview process. While I struggled a lot with getting theory and creating projects, I have to say that it was a wise choice. I worked on making time to code or learn new concepts at least once a day or every other day. By the time the middle of September rolled around, I managed to earn an HTML certificate of completion on SoloLearn AND completed four of the five projects required for the Responsive Web Design certificate on FreeCodeCamp.

And then I won a ticket to an inaugural tech summit in Toronto.

I’m still in disbelief that I even won the ticket, and the event is next week. My imposter syndrome is flaring up because:

I don’t work in tech…yet.
I still work in retail.
I’m learning things on my own with various resources, I didn’t go to a bootcamp, and I certainly don’t have a degree in Computer Science.

I didn’t want to be that person attending the summit who doesn’t belong there. My first thought was that I could have just ruined another person’s chance to go. I’m talking about someone with real experience in the tech industry and someone who would deserve it more. I had to stand up and affirm to myself that, yes, I deserve to be in that space, and I should do this thing that scares me right now. It’s a way of getting out of this comfort zone I have been in.

While this blog has been focused on UI work, I will be adding links to the front-end development projects I complete as well. Some projects currently have a home on my CodePen page. Please don’t drag me too much over the ones I have there. They will be redone at some point, but I have to say I’m proud of that CSS Documentation page!

As always, feel free to get in touch with questions, comments, job offers, paid internships, etc. Haha. Don’t use the contact form for the sole purpose of telling me that I have a typo somewhere on this website, without even mentioning where you saw it, plug some website you use, and then throw in “Typos reduce your credibility.”

Seriously. That actually happened.

-Tenisha