Coding Your Dreams: Why I Want to Patch My Current Life with Coding

As a child I was simultaneously a bright yet silly child. I thought that I could invent a lightsaber from Star Wars by getting a flashlight and putting multiple magnifying glasses to concentrate the light beam into a super hot laser. I thought with that I would be sure to make a million, billion dollars because:
“Who the heck doesn’t want a lightsaber?”

Whenever I watched movies I also wondered why the people would have their arms and legs blown off but fall to the ground, dead, I wondered, “Why are you dead? You didn’t get your heart or your brain hurt?” I also would pray that the characters that died in the movies would go to heaven because it would be sad if they didn’t.

Looking back I chuckle and am kind of embarrassed on how naïve I used to be.

I am now almost 24 and looking at where I am in the world. I am in a rut, in a “Swamp of Despair” if you will (a Flatiron School phrase). I don’t really know what I want to do with my life, although I DO know that I don’t want to work for retail as a produce assistant manager anymore.

There’s really no way to sugar-coat this foul pill I must swallow. Actually, forget pill, there’s no way to sugar-coat this foul 9-course meal laid before me: I messed up. I didn’t just mess up a little bit. I messed up a whole lot. It’s actually incredible how much I messed up and ended up in the situation where I am right now. Aimless, miserable, and most of all scared.

What can I do now?

I graduated with an undergrad in Psychology after 5 long years, but now it feels like a worthless piece of fancy paper since it really hasn’t done anything for me. To me it’s nothing more than a hollow trophy that I can use to feel better about myself for a bit, only to laugh at how ridiculous notion is that this scrap means anything in this highly-competitive and cut-throat world.

With the pandemic and turmoil everywhere to be seen. It’s so easy to fall into the “Swamp of Despair”.

I was in this swamp for a very long time. It caused me to become bitter and make mistakes that hurt the ones precious around me and for me to hurt myself.

But a memory of when I was young came to me: the memory of gentleness, sweetness, and innocence. The me that wanted to create cool things and have others to be in a happier and better place.

I was crippled and wounded by my self-destructive mindset. But why am I letting something as simple as a little bit of maiming and dismemberment stop me? My head and my heart are still intact. I can still keep moving forward.

I want to help others, I want to pass on a simple wisdom, “Things can suck. Things can be downright awful. But amidst this, someone out there wants you to smile. Someone wants you to be happy. So it’s okay. You’re allowed to smile. You’re allowed to be happy.”

The best way to pass this message to others is by going on the highest mountaintop with the loudest voice, possible and let the entire world know about it.

So, what better mountaintop, what better voice than with something that everyone listens to and encounters every single day: the Internet.

I want to learn coding to have the best tools to navigate the Internet. I want to learn coding to help me build a videogame. I want to learn how to build websites so people that don’t know how can have their voice heard so that they can get one step to achieving there dreams and one step closer to happiness.

I am no longer my younger self anymore. He has aged and become more weary. I am aware that coding will not feel glamorous. Coding will be difficult. It will be downright stressful and painful at times.

But that’s okay. I have also become smarter, I have also become stronger. I have so much more experience and knowledge. Just the things I need to achieve what I always wanted to do, to help others.

So I hope to learn the language of the web. I hope to learn Ruby, JavaScript, Python, HTML, CSS, C, C++ and so much more. I want to learn the languages to communicate to the whole wide world, “Please, be happy. I want you to be a little bit happier.”

I am not content with this buggy and messy version of life. It needs a patch. It needs an update.

Let’s give coding a try. Let’s see if I can use this skill, this language to code my dream.

Thank you for listening.

Please be happier.

This has been Aeco, logging off.