Hello, and welcome to my very first blog post.

My Name is Don. I am a software engineer who builds websites and web applications for clients in the DMV area. I have been on this journey for about 10 months now, and it has been a journey so far, to say the least. I have learned HTML, and CSS, and am continuing to learn Javascript at the moment.

In the past 10 months, I have learned a lot, and have retained the information I never expected to retain. But the thing about this journey is when you look online and do your research, you will come across a ton of videos and articles about "getting $100k salary after learning Software development in 6 months." Now, if you are new to this world, this will sound extremely appealing (and maybe even doable if you have the focus). But as a person who has been around this for 10 months now, I have started to realize that this is a never-ending learning journey.

You'll realize that the more you understand, the more you feel like you do not understand. This has put me in a loop of confidence and questioning my intelligence (most people in this field would call this Impostor Syndrome). I would feel very confident with what I have learned, but then when it was time to actually build, it would take me longer than I would like to admit to actually put into practice what I have been learning. This specific type of struggle is something that would take a toll on me and would lead to inconsistencies of my learning journey.

I had a coffee chat with someone not too long ago and he gave me what I believe was some of the best advice about this field. After explaining to him my struggles, all he said to me was to "keep going" and eventually it would click. I didn't think this was practical advice at first, but man was he right. After a while and a roller coaster of emotions, I came to understand that I am not meant to know everything about software development. That the most important part about this field is knowing how to ask questions you are stuck on, knowing how to do your research, and STAYING CONSISTENT.

Now that we have a little bit of my back story out of the way, let's talk about what I have been up to lately. I am currently dabbling between two classes. 100Devs and The Odin Project. I initially started with 100Devs but after a while, I felt like I needed something that required me to read more because visual learning was not my strong suit. So I went on and started The Odin Project but kept 100Devs in my back pocket. As of today, I have completed the foundation's section of TOP and am on the Full stack javascript section now. I will do another blog post on what I think about TOP's foundation section at a later date.

With the 100Devs class, this is where I learned most of my basic knowledge of coding that I know today. Even further, this class is also showing me how to freelance which I believe would be a great way to gain both experience and references for when I finally decide to start my hunt.

Well, that is all for now. I hope to be able to keep you updated with my journey as I move forward and maybe become an inspiration to someone in the future! See you next time.