The staircase, the journey.
My friends, it has been soooo long since the last update. So much has happened, it’d take a mini-epic to fill in on all the details…
Last report was that I had enrolled in Coding Bootcamp seven months ago — months that feel like the blink of an eye.
There’s a deluge of adventures and experiences pent up behind a dam within me, desiring to flood forth.
Let’s tease out just one. One and only one. Looking back? Looking ahead? How about a thread woven through the fabric of Now, and thus linking what was with what will be.
Which invites the most important theme of them all. The very motivation of this blog, this work, this Life o’mine. I speak, of course, of Home.
The familiar space within.
The sacred temple whose cavernous spaciousness soothes the soul.
The place of refuge, healing and surrender.
Saying “Yes!” to the call of Coding provided a solid touchstone going into this unfamiliar territory. When completely unmoored by information overload, long hours and the incessant frustration at not knowing enough… that touchstone reminded me that I was on the Right road.
It was thanks to mindfulness that I soon learned that detaching from my perfectionist expectations would be the only way to sail on without crashing on the rocky shore day after day.
In one week alone, we dove into Javascript, jQuery, then ajax — Monday Tuesday Wednesday — leaving me gasping for air at the sheer quantity of new info.
And then seeing how, repeatedly practicing line after line of code, it began to formulate the key to solving problems that had seemed so difficult only one week before.
The Lesson Learned, that I share with you here — in hopes of being of use to you as it reminds and supports me every day now is this:
Learning something new is merely a question of exposure.
The first pass may leave you in a mental whirlwind of confusion.
The second pass may not leave you much clearer.
The third pass begins to reveal a pattern here and there.
The fourth pass graces you with some surprises of recognition — it’s becoming familiar!
The tenth pass finds you exploring nuances, testing limits, wondering how you might hack it… booya!
Right now I’m in the first or second pass of exposure in the new endeavor called: Job Search.
As with Code Camp, impatience and frustration have no place here. They only serve to narrow the ability to absorb what needs to be observed and learned.
As always, maintaining awareness of Home, or noticing the lack thereof, is The Work.
The Work during times of intense learning like at Code Camp,
The Work in the time of job search,
The Work in the future when considering job offers,
The Work in times of acclimating to a new position.
Let’s wrap up with a reminder of the three concurrent ways to support your Home space:
Rescue: the things you do in the moment when you realize you’re “off” such removing yourself from the situation to take a walk or breathing exercises.
Cultivation: daily routine, for example, my long standing morning routine is: yoga/sit/journal
Full reset: monthly? quarterly? invitations to let it all go, for example a day at the hot springs
That’s it for today. I will say that I’ve missed writing here — there’s just so much I want to share, and… well, that’s the beauty of life, yes? We always-always-always have the opportunity to begin each day anew.
XO
