“You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.” ― Amy Poehler, Yes Please
Over 100 days ago, I decided that this was it. I was tired of sitting, wishing for more, reading the books, and watching the videos. I was ready to do more. To build things and progress in my knowledge while doing so. I wanted to code beyond HTML and CSS. My desire to be good at something, specifically, front-end web development, was what spurred me on to commit to the 100 Days of Code Challenge.
Deep Work Collides into 100 Days of Code
As I've mentioned in a prior post, I was already primed for the idea of deep work when I stumbled upon Cal Newport's book Deep Work. Mastering a craft had jumped to the top of my list of things to accomplish in life. And Newport's words inspired me to drop the fluff and make the time to develop my skills.
It wasn't long after finishing his book when I ran across Alexander Kallaway's challenge for 2017: code for 100 consecutive days. Perfect! This was just the focus I needed to get the wheels in my head spinning. I couldn't wait until January 4, 2017 to move forward. Thus, my 15-week journey started on December 20, 2016. And the rest is history on Twitter, Github, and Carney Develop It.
What I Got Out Of This Challenge
Some of those big ideas that I had been kicking around inside my skull finally came to fruition. Below are just a few things I'm proud to say happened, instead of wishing and hoping they would come about one day:
- started contributing to open source projects like the Women Who Code website
- launched my personal website, hand coded with love
- initiated development of my Mars 511 web app to learn more about API use
- completed the bulk of Free Code Camp's Front-End Development coursework and projects
- dug into the basics of the Javascript by building things
- abandoned my reliance on jQuery for use of vanilla JavaScript
- created art with CSS for fun and learning
- fell in love with SCSS and started using it regularly during my projects
- dusted off my Raspberry Pi
- dreamed bigger dreams
- gained a whole lot of coding confidence in myself and my ability to do more dev work at my job
Total time spent coding: 153 hours
https://twitter.com/click2carney/status/847313750017232897
“You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.” ― Amy Poehler, Yes Please
What's Next
The perk of staying the course during a long period of time? Hope. I have confirmed that I can get better at something and I will be better with time and commitment. Anything is possible.
You know what else I received? Focus. Creating with JavaScript truly adds enhancement, but my joy comes from designing with CSS. When the two work together, amazing things happen. Yet all of time and space melt away when I'm playing with those stylesheets. That's the craft I shouldn't stray far from. Well, that, and standards. I learned I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to HTML structure and web accessibility.
What's next for me? Just you wait and see!