There are ten thousands reasons NOT to attempt a mid-life career change from journalist to JavaScript developer. And I am totally tempted to list every single one of them right here, because then that would keep me from going back to the piece of code I have been beating my head against for the past three hours and 50 minutes.

I'm pretty much scared witless by this, my failure to solve what should have been a straightforward low-level code challenge. Because by now I should be better than this.

It has been 15 months since I graduated front-end web developer bootcamp (at Betamore Academy, here in Baltimore) and I have not yet landed a job as a coder. To be honest, I have not really been looking -- because I know my skills are not where they need to be in order to get the job I want. The opportunities that came my way, immediately post bootcamp, were basically formatting HTML and CSS marketing emails -- which so did not interest me. I was newly hooked on JavaScript and wanted to get a real coding job.

Sounds good, right? Spend a few more months studying JS, level up to being a serious contender for a serious dev job. But: there is always a but, and this is a big one: It's a long, long way from JS n00b to someone who can actually build useful things.  Like so many other recent bootcamp grads, I've stumbled across the gaping chasm that exists between the end of the course and the distant, much-desired horizon of being a skilled, experienced (and, yes please, paid) professional programmer. There are no bridges across this chasm, at least none that I've been able to find. There is no map. Somehow, you're just supposed to magically just get there. The path is made by walking.

And so the past year has been a comedy of errors, of me trying to self-study JavaScript and build a portfolio, between paying the rent and raising the kids (did I mention I'm a single parent?) and just the regular life stuff we've all got. Progress has been agonizingly slow. Mainly because studying is the first thing to fall off my daily to-do list when something comes up, like one of my kids is home sick from school or I have a writing deadline (tech journalism is how I'm currently earning that aforementioned rent) or fill-in-the-blank-with-today's-disaster. 

So this is me re-arranging my priorities. It's time to get serious about JS, put it at the front of the queue instead of the end. I hereby commit to spending minimum one hour each day doing something to roll that rock an eentsy bit forward: code challenges. Reading Kyle Simpson's YDKJS books. Working through WatchAndCode.com lessons. Or even my own small JS projects.

My commitment: no later than 9am each morning, weekends included, my butt is going to be in my desk chair.  I am going to write at least a short account of what I did, posted here. And also push things to GitHub, to show this work to the world. My GH dance card is distressingly blank because I have not been putting up the small things I do. I guess I feel like they're too inconsequential. (Also I have a bit of a GH avoidance issue, so this will help me get over that ridiculous, self-imposed blockage as well).

I started today. Next post is about what I did. But before then, a final word about this blog's title. I have a coding pal, Asa, who is in pretty much the same situation I am when it comes to trying, and failing, to advance as autodidacts. We both start, we both stop -- get distracted or pulled away -- and above all we commiserate over how crazy-making the whole process can be.  A recent sample Slack exchange:

asasmith [12:13 PM] 
I'll go on a js kick, and then get pulled away from it work on other stuff, then I feel like I'm back at square one when I come to it

michellegee [12:13 PM]
YES 

asasmith [12:14 PM]
patience is not a skill of mine
I want to know all of the things now 

michellegee [12:17 PM]
learning takes place in stages, just because of how our brains are wired.  first comes exposure, the initial interaction with new skill/knowledge.  second comes integration — which, interestingly, happens while we are sleeping.  the brain organizes and stores that information at that time.
there is a term called “savings” that refers to how, every time you work on this new skill, the length of time required to retrieve and use your newly learned information gets shorter and shorter.  but this is an inevitable middle step towards true fluency: we all have this gap where we have to struggle to implement what we've learned. there is no short-cutting the process, but the more you do it the easier it gets. obviously.
the smarter we are, the more impatient we are with our own learning curves.  we think that somehow we should be able to skip that long, difficult slog from first exposure to true assimilation.  but nobody can.

not even einstein.

So now I'm putting my money where my mouth is. It's assimilation time, fellow travelers. Let's put the pedal to the JS metal and find out how to get there from here.