Giving it all I got

Some days you have less to bring to the table than others, as far as energy and attention go. Apparently, this is one of those days, so advanced apologies if this is written poorly. Within the first 30 minutes of studying tonight, I fell asleep. This is typically not a good sign of the night having longevity. Since then, I seemed to have recovered to a certain extent and I'm back to full attention, but it's only a matter of time before I start to go down again. But, as long as I've studied for at least an hour, written this blog entry, and posted a tweet about it, I've met the minimum requirements. I'm nearly there, as far that goes, so the rest is immaterial.

This evening, I started working on Brian Holt's "Intermediate React" on Frontend Masters. This course builds on the project started in "Complete Intro to React," an app that displays animals that are up for adoption and allows you to choose an animal type and breed. In this course, we are exploring hooks further in depth, working with Emotion, code-splitting, Redux, testing in React, and server-side rendering. Obviously, these topics are a lot more complex than the rudimentary concepts explored in the first course, although I learned quite a bit about hooks that I didn't know in the first course. I like Brian's style of instruction, but he tends to imply knowledge that may or may not be there. Luckily, there are plenty of courses on Frontend Masters that explore these topics in much greater depth, and I think that's the point. This is supposed to be a course that outlines these concepts, but it's not everything you need to know.

Tomorrow's Monday, meaning it will be time to send out some more applications and explore other avenues of finding an actual job, which has proven to be the most difficult part of this whole journey. I wouldn't say that learning web development has been easy, but the path to do so is fairly straightforward. Finding a job has been a multi-faceted attack that has led me nowhere so far. I'm up to around 600 connections on LinkedIn, and I feel like I'm drilling deeper into the inner circles of the web development. Every time I make a connection, I start up a conversation with that person in hopes of building a positive relationship. So far, this has gone really well. I'm now starting to connect with people that work at places like Google and other huge tech companies, as well as many that are much more obscure but may or may not be hiring. All it takes is one connection that can refer me first hand to their hiring manager that will make all the difference in the world. Along with LinkedIn, I just surpassed 500 followers on Twitter, and this could eventually have the same result. If someone with hiring power were to come across my blog and recognize the hard work and determination I have, then this could bode really well. Regardless, the #100DaysOfCode community has been an incredible source of motivation and support that I didn't expect in the least. I've met people like Matt Bear that have led to pair programming sessions, and others who are more than willing to offer help where help is needed. Overall, I'm incredibly impressed by the development community; it seems there is a gathering of good people in this area, which is such a breath of fresh air coming from the golf business.

Until tomorrow!