I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on web development recently, as if you didn’t know. I know I’ve discussed the joys of learning something new and I really can’t stress enough how important it is for everyone to spend some time and learn a new skill. Learning skills aren’t pointless because you don’t use them at work or because they don’t directly pertain to your life. Like an accountant learning to draw would have nothing to do with their line of work but the development stage of learning something new especially something completely outside of your wheel house will help develop new insights and pathways into your thinking process. Every time I learn something new I perceive a noticeable difference in how I approach problems. The crazy thing is that you never know what you will find when you take a chance on a new skill.
For me there are 3 things about me that basically wraps me up in a nutshell. I’m logical, I’m creative, and I love to build stuff. These things have a tendency to consistently be at war with themselves. It’s seldom that I ever find something that encompasses all three areas of who I am, it’s usually a combination of 2 but rarely ever all 3. I’ve been thinking about what makes web development so appealing to me and I’ve come to realize that it checks all the 3 areas of who I am. It relies heavily on logical processes, it needs creative problem solving and imagination for design and feature functionality, and no matter what you are doing you’re building something. All three areas all combine to create one challenging and interesting field. Due to the fact that it covers all areas of who I am, I’m compelled to keep pushing forward with what I am doing, I crave more knowledge and it fully envelops my thoughts.
I’m sure I’m starting to sound like a broken record when it comes to learning new things but it really makes a massive difference on your life and the process helps you identify what you want out of your life. I fear that many of us go through life and never get to reach our potential because we don’t really know who we are or what we want. I know most of the time I have no idea what I want but there are moments of clarity where pieces get revealed to me and I start seeing the bigger picture. The identification of the bigger picture is only available because of my pursuit of trying to explore as much as I possibly can. It took me a long time to fully realize what really makes me happy and what satisfies my needs and discovered these by trying different things. I can understand now why I end up getting bored or unsatisfied with work and hobbies and I can see a path that will help bring me greater satisfaction and pleasure out of life. At the end of the day, it’s not about what job you have, how much money you make, what hobbies you enjoy, it’s that you can go to sleep feeling satisfied because you fundamentally enjoyed every aspect of your day and it checked all those right boxes.