Reflections on the First Week

I haven't had a real weekend off since I was in school. Of course, I've had two days off, and most of the time in a row, but never on Saturday and Sunday. It shouldn't feel any different than it would any other 2 days off, but it does for some reason. Physically, my body is not nearly as beat down as it usually is after a week of work, and that's a huge positive. Typically, I walk around like a zombie at least for the first day I'm off for my weekend, but I felt awesome and full of energy today. I felt like I actually got to enjoy my weekend, instead of just recovering from the week I just had. It was a difficult first week, and I talked a lot about it in yesterday's entry, but I learned a lot and was able to get something completed and approved within the first 3 days, a huge plus. It's nice to have a couple of days to think through the current project I'm working on. I made some great progress on it yesterday, and feel like I got about halfway through the initial stages of it, but the next step is going to be a lot more difficult, and Monday is certainly not going to be an easy day. At least I have one more day after today to work on a plan for tackling it, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to be doing. It was nice to be able to enjoy my day off without being completely drained of energy. I feel like I'm on the same level as the rest of the world, for once, as the world is in pandemonium.

Yes, I would be remiss not to discuss the Coronavirus at some point, and now seems to be as good of a time as any. We have known this was coming for over a month now; the writing has been on the wall, and it was only a matter of time. Still, we as a country are getting caught with our pants down due to the inaction of our administration. Instead of preparing for the inevitable, the virus was called a hoax, and the lack of trust in the media caused by the rhetoric from our leadership in this country has caused a large swath of people to take this situation much too lightly. In my town, they are holding an art festival downtown today with huge crowds showing up, acting as if nothing were happening. My fiancé works for a banquet company, and they are holding a large event tonight, exposing both the staff and the patrons to unnecessary danger. We are on the same trajectory as Italy, and things went downhill very quickly in Italy, leading to a complete shut down of the country. I don't get concerned about things like this easily, and I also don't think my family is in immediate danger from the virus, but the repercussions of our employers and our daycare being shut down could be financially crippling. We are still in the early days of this, but I think it's going to get a lot worse than it is.

Putting the Coronavirus aside, I did, as always, spend some time studying today, and I'm not done yet. I got a couple hours in while the little girl was napping, and now that she's in bed, I can spend some more time getting after it. I would really like to be studying something more along the lines of what I'm working on in my work, but I have this course that I started a few weeks back looming over my head, and I really want to put it to bed before moving on. I still have quite a ways to go, but it's at least pertinent to what I'm doing. Anything in the realm of JavaScript is going to be something I can apply to my job, as well as React, React Native, XState, PHP, Laravel, SQL, ASP.net, C#, HTML, CSS and the list goes on. Luckily, my focus will be on the world of React and JavaScript for the foreseeable future, but it will be expected of me to learn these other languages and technologies in the long run, which I'm really excited to do. In one of the projects the other frontend guy is working on, he's creating a React Native app for the IPad that uses XState for state management. It's really cool, and I'm really looking forward to learning XState, but it will be a while before I have to get into that. XState and other state machines, but mostly XState, are on the rise in popularity and I think there is a high likelihood that it will be a very marketable skill going forward. Even though some of these languages and technologies they are using, like PHP, Laravel, ASP.net, and SQL are a little outdated, these are still things that people use in the professional world quite regularly, and they could be very useful to know as well. I don't think my exposure to ASP.net will be that extensive, but I'm more than happy to learn whatever I can, as long as they're willing to teach me. If not, I'll teach myself.

Until tomorrow!