Contemplation

This life is full of choices, and all we can is try and make the best one in the moment. Hindsight reveals a lot, and often the choices we make prove to be wrong, while other times they prove to be pivotal in leading to other options otherwise not available. At the time of making these choices, it can be really confusing, and the moment itself can distort the correct decision. Since Friday, I've been toiling over a decision that seems to be one of those pivotal ones. I was offered a job as a software developer, the only offer I've received since I started this journey on May 26th. I had played out the moment of receiving my first job offer in the development field so many times in my mind, and I thought I had a good idea of what that would look like. This turned out to be far from true. Instead of being overjoyed, I was faced with a lot of feelings and a much harder decision than I ever thought. I thought I would be low-balled in my first job in the industry, given I don't have a Computer Science degree or any prior experience. I expected the number wouldn't be as much as I had initially anticipated when I started this journey, due to a lack of research on the inflation of national averages from large cities like San Francisco and New York. I expected a lower than local average even, but not this low.

The offer I received would constitute about a 15 to 20 percent pay cut from my current position as a golf professional. Part of the reason I want to get out of the golf industry is the overall feeling of being undervalued coming from a lower-than-sufficient salary. So, to receive an offer as low as this, instead of feeling like a walking party, I was angry. Over the weekend, I got over this feeling of anger and started contemplating the pros and cons of the position. On the positive side, it's really close to home and daycare, I would have a foot in the door, and I would be learning from a great team. As far as the negatives, they sort of dried up when I got past the insulting offer. I started to think maybe I could swallow this pill and go along with it to gain the necessary experience. What I didn't realize is the pressure this would put on my fiancé and her own pursuit of a happy career. If I take a cut in pay, she wouldn't have time to focus on moving forward towards a better position in life for herself. After several frustrating conversations where a lot more was being said than was actually being verbalized and an insightful conversation with my parents, I realized I needed to move on from this offer. Trust that this was one of the most difficult decisions I've had to make in my life. Sadly, if they had offered me a salary a little more in line with what I think I'm worth, this decision would have been simple and it could have been one of the happier days of my life.

As I said, I'm moving on, as there's no time to dwell on this frustrating situation. I'm right back on the grind tonight, working through Colt Steele and Stephen Grider's The New JavaScript Bootcamp. As I stated yesterday, I finally made to the second half of the course, where the focus shifts from being completely conceptual to being project-based. This has proven to be much more engaging, and I'm cruising right through. Yesterday, I finished the first of about 9 or 10 projects in this section, creating a really cool timer app with vanilla JavaScript. This app allows the user to type in a numeric value, hit play and the timer starts counting down the seconds to 0 from this number, with an SVG circle that slowly loses its border in congruity with this timer. Here's a link to the finished app. Now, it's on to a movie search app. I've been looking for a good tutorial on creating a search function in an app, and so far this has been phenomenal. So far, I can say I really like Stephen Grider's style of teaching; he's taking his time to stop and explain concepts in the code we are building and I feel like I understand and could replicate everything we've written to this point. Stephen has a wide array of courses, so I'm excited to take a closer look at his collection after I complete this course. However, this won't be for quite a while, given I'm starting CSPrep tomorrow!

Until tomorrow!