During the month of January, I will be posting (tentatively) one post every day as part of the #bloganuary challenge
Today’s Prompt:
Write about the last time you left your comfort zone.

I like to think I am good at going out of my comfort zone. If I look back, I have never stayed in it for too long. I did my Bachelor in Journalism, decided I didn’t want to be a journalist but finished the course anyway because I needed the diploma in order to apply to the immigration process. Even though I love photography (this was one of the few good things I got from university. This and the people I met that made a huge difference in my life, be it friends or mentors), I had to work photographing events, which makes me super uncomfortable, but I had a goal, and that helped with my goal.

I immigrated to another country by myself, I worked as a customer support person over the phone in two languages that were not my native one. I switched careers when I had to. So, I think I’m ok being out of my comfort zone. I like challenges.

In a conversation with my mentor (and soon-to-be team leader), we were talking about how 2022 was looking for the team, the challenges, what is going to happen, what we will be focusing on and it’s gonna be a pretty busy and crazy year. And as a joke, I asked him if he wasn’t freaking out about having a totally newbie mobile developer in his team with all the things to focus and worry about in 2022. He said that if there was one thing he learned about me during our mentorship was that I never run away from a challenge. On the contrary, I run towards them, so he was not worried.

I still think he should be worried 🤣 , but his answer made me think about that, and it’s true. I really like challenges.

However, even though the idea of switching careers to become a software engineer has been bouncing in my head for a while, something always got in the way and I ended up postponing it somehow. Some people say everything happens when it should happen. I don’t believe in that. I think we, provided we have the means to do it, need to make it happen. And this year I decided to make it happen.

Despite what I read and heard, saying I should not start programming with mobile because it’s way harder, despite having given up other times before for several different reasons, this time I went through with it. I wanted to give up so many times, but every time I made the decision not to. I was terrified I was gonna fail, and I don’t deal with failure very well. But I decided to go ahead with it anyways. 100% outside my comfort zone.

And getting here, 21 days before starting my dev rotation, made me realize this will be my default status. Being a developer means constantly being outside your comfort zone. Means not knowing exactly what to do, how to do something, how to fix a bug. This means, as my mentor once said, feeling comfortable being uncomfortable all the time.

So cheers to, hopefully, a lifetime of being outside my comfort zone. Bring it on!