Coronavirus Changes Everything

Two weeks ago my schedule was the busiest it’s ever been. A week full of interviews and a full work schedule made it seem like there weren’t enough hours in the week to get anything done. Well apparently life for everyone in the world can change in basically a matter of hours. The Coronavirus pandemic has essentianlly brought life to a slow crawl for most of the world. Being a bartender in New York put me in a position to be among the first to feel economic impact of “social distancing.” Now my previously packed schedule is basically empty, for the forseeable future. Now that I’m unemployed for the forseeable furture, I have nothing but time to commit to learning and growing as a software developer. I know that most people are having a hard time dealing with the prospect of weeks long self-quarantining, but I personally don’t find the idea too daunting. As one of the world’s leading introverts, being told to stay in at home brings literally no anxiety or stress.

One thing that I’ve learned so far while working towards becoming a profressional software developer is the need for structure in my pursuit. I’ve decided to split my time among 3 main activities. First is working on projects, second is technology specific education (learning new tools and tech), and thrid is conceptual education.

In terms of projects I’m working on, I’m dividing my time between a new version of my app Where Did You Eat (which I am rebuilding as a React app with a Rails backend), improving the styling of most of my past projects, and an eventual Coronavirus focused project, ideally contributing to an in progress project.

For tech specific eduation, currently I’m working through the W3 CSS education course so that I can polish out the rough edges of my portfolio projects, working with GraphQL as it seems to be increasingly popular and indemand as a skill set, and finally starting out in learning Python.

In terms of more conceptual education, I’m currently working through Google’s Web Development Fundamentals (https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals), as well as Flatiron School’s Computer Science education track in order to buff my skills in live coding and whiteboarding sessions.