Everyday seems to feel amazing at the moment — as I have said I have found my stride, but surely there has to be a reason for it. Last summer I took part in a personal development course called Land work by Success through Soca and now every Monday night, the founder Louis hosts IG lives tackling different aspects of your life.
Last week, he started a new topic — Fear. Now I am an avid follower of his lives, so signed in anyway even though I was pretty sure I have nothing I was fearful of, other than the obvious death and no carnival!
The gist of what Louis taught us is you need to control fear or it will control you — at that moment it dawned on me, this course, everything I had been learning I was terrified of and full of fear that I would get it wrong, that I do a lot, but I also don’t know enough to fix it.
Eóin last week was telling us about when he used to work as a consultant and he described his coding style as ‘Stress Driven Development’ a play on what we should be doing which is “Test Driven Development’. At that moment, everything Louis had taught me came to the front of my mind and I realised I was letting fear — of pretty much everything — control what I was doing.
It was time for me to take control of it, all of it! Friday Morning I wrote out a process document for setting up a basic web app framework and I followed it meticulously while setting up my weekend project. The result — a very relaxed Saturday coding as I had taken control.
So this is a public thank you to Louis and STS for always helping me level up even while I am already trying to level up ❤
Last night was session 2 of Fear and Louis always asks about how we have implemented what we have learnt — at that exact moment it dawned on me, this was the reason I felt good and I fully intend for it to remain this way.
Dream Team this morning was mostly a nerd out session of games, but for once a game I had played…Civilisation IV! For many years I was very obsessed with this game and spent many days glued to my computer playing it — we are gonna have a weekend social playing some online games together, I am excited!
The rest of my morning was self directed learning until my 2pm pairing. I switched up the 4 hour slot a little and ran a few errands first thing and then jumped into my code and extended that through lunch, it threw off my eating pattern for the day a little but successful otherwise.
I split my time in 2, firstly refactoring some code on my weekend challenge. The awesome Tatsiana (a technical coach) gave me feedback to work on some tests, unfortunately I was unable to implement her suggestions so we jumped on a zoom and she expertly walked me through my errors.
After that I wanted to re-do yesterdays work — in the effort to take control I needed to make sure I had a solid understanding of what we are working on and I wasn’t yet there. Walking back through everything definitely helped me in pairing this afternoon.
My pair partner today was Tom, the final member of the Dream Team I hadn’t paired with yet. Tom is taking the course from Chile and for that I am VERY jealous. It was really nice to spend some time 1–1 getting to know him better and we definitely had a relaxed approach to or tasks.
It was very necessary, this was HARD, but for once fear wasn’t clouding my judgement and we worked very well navigating our way through the challenges. I really appreciated Tom’s approach of studying every line of each challenge and making sure we fully understand what we are trying to do! Thanks Tom!
Software and Soca
After yesterday’s Soca Starter mix, I have decided this week is dedicated to some DJ mixes I think you may like. Next up DJ Jel — Jel is incredible for many reasons but is always top of my recommendations for newbies to Soca because every mix is accompanied by a Track List!! I hope you enjoy!
