by Jon Weinstein, Software Development Team
When you love what you do, waking up and going to work is exciting. This wasn’t always the case for me, as I spent a while in a career that I didn’t really enjoy. My family and friends knew this and could even sense my unhappiness before I truly did. They continuously encouraged me to explore other opportunities in a career that I would find more interesting. Although finance and data analytics is a great career, it wasn’t the one best suited for me.
Knowing you want to do something else is just the first step, and in my case, the easier step. Starting anew in a different field is not only frightening from a financial standpoint, but it is mentally unnerving as well.
Do I have the skills to thrive in a new career? Am I too old to explore other paths? Will I be able to find a position with little experience? These are normal, human questions that many people have as uncertainty runs strong when assessing life-changing events. Self-doubt and rationalizations can make it easy to turn our backs on these choices, as it’s easier to keep our heads down and just keep doing what we’re doing. But this can also be quite detrimental.
After pushing past these irrational but very real fears, I did in fact initiate the process of becoming a software developer. I finished a software developer bootcamp and quickly found a position as a mobile app developer. It would be an understatement to say that making this change was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Now I wake up excited to get to work, and I feel like an artist in many ways. I start with a blank screen, write a bunch of code, and voila, I have a beautiful end product that I helped create. Am I good enough? Can I do this? Yes, I am and yes, I can. And so can you.