It may be already more than two years as I try to deliver this project. I had to start it from scratch as the environment changed. Had to rethink the approach and learn more about publishing, writing and the subject itself. But it seems I'm on the right course to deliver this year. Becoming a Software Developer is meant to be a testimony to my journey, baked in a way that could show the path to the others. During over twenty years in the trade, I trained multiple developers, succeeded and failed. I had a chance to learn from great mentors and see those not worth following. I noticed that many books for people who aspire to work in software engineering focus only on the technical aspects. Few that try to tackle other areas seem to be soulless career self books. I still miss something that you could relate to, which helps you choose your destination before the deep dive. People who enter #100daysofcode or similar challenges this way burn out very fast. They miss the point, as often they have no idea what the skills they learn will be used for.

This year was a massive challenge to everyone but also brought a positive change. Don't remember any such eventful year before, so to sum up everything I will make a bullet point list.

1. Turn off notifications on the phone except work or productivity related
2. Turn on Do Not Disturb between 6:00 PM and 7:30 AM except for calls and calendar reminders
3. Turn off all Chrome Notificatons
4. Add site blocker extension to Chrome and block social media between 9:30 and 5 PM
5. Add site and app blocker extention to phone
6. Put the phone in the cage when not using 2FA
7. Keep phone in the cage after work until children are not asleep

Experiment worked for two weeks. Was a success. Then I left it. Need to start again now as it's really working.

It may sound like I wanted to complain about the lockdown, but it's more a coincidence in words. I don't mind the lockdown now and understand the cost and damage of it. But I even like it. It's more difficult to keep fit, but easier to look after the close ones. I mean, the closest ones. The family unit. With other connections, it's a bit different. Well. I've always been a bit of loner. I had loads of connections and in some environments were quite recognisable. But I never had too many very close people around. It's not their fault. It's mine. Very rarely I find people interesting. I respect them and care about my collective, but when it's dismantled for some reason all fades away. Even though, I don't feel to a bad about it. I respect that people have their lives and loyalties. I'm here for them, but I don't like to push into their lives.

What I write here may sound bad for some people, even offend them. I understand and tolerate movement towards "body positivity". Anyhow, I also see the dark side of it. Body positivity often hides or even promotes a lifestyle that leads to disability and premature death. As a person who lost very early a parent to an unhealthy lifestyle, please allow me to oppose that movement. I respect it but consider wrong and harmful.

Martin has started primary school, so thoughts about education and the future began to gather in my head. Luckily instead of panicking and Googling, I've turned towards some literature. Thanks to a brilliant book by Steve Biddulph - Raising Boys in the 21st Century I realised that our progress so far is far better than we should expect. As for trilingual four-five year old, he picks up phonics and numbers pretty well, can use various devices, tell stories, learns to describe emotions, shows compassion, empathy and care. Despite still weak English, he manages to build strong relations with other children. He even can perform simple "programming" with Scratch and CodeSpark.

There has been a lot of chaos recently. Don't take it as a Pre-New-Years resolution, but I feel like I need and I can come back to a bit more organised lifestyle. And yes, it's because our lifestyle has changed a great deal. It's clear that at least for next month we will spend most of our time at home and working remotely may stay here for longer. It required some amendments, especially home became a bit tighter. It also turned out that without the office environment, I need far more organised routine. Otherwise, I'd keep failing behind with most of the things I wanted to achieve.

Before I dig into the problem, I need to admit that to some extent I'm a hypocrite. Where I'm totally against and disgusted by call-out (or cancel) culture I may be responsible for participating in it. When I publish a video on YouTube of a driver (cyclists and pedestrians don't have number plates, therefore they stay anonymous) I kind of name and shame them, call them out, even if I'm fully sure they did something wrong, dangerous and worth pointing out. Tho I may have to rethink that, even while writing this entry.

That may be the main question. It would be quite valid if we spoke about past events in my life (as mentioned in Priorities blog post). But this time I mean my 600-mile cycling challenge in August.

What and why? ¶

Another year, another challenge. After cycling 300 miles for University or Liverpool Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund in 2017 and walking over 50 miles for 11-year-old Szymon in 2018 I continue my journey by cycling 600 miles from Cornwall to Kent (and back to London).

Some years ago when I was cycling with our friends back in Poland we had a very close call with a car. It passed us very fast, very close, forcing a car that rode the opposite direction to run to the side of the road to avoid a crush. In the result of this case being reported my friend who cycled with me that day was summoned to the court because apparently, he overtook me on the inside. In reality, I was dropping to the back of the peloton at that moment. The case was dismissed but we all lost faith in the law.

I used to be very stressed. That actually is an understatement. I used to live with mortifying fear of failure. But I don't tell that to refer yet again to book by Mark Manson, but to share some finding that came with age, life events and yet again... failures. Well, with some successes too.

It is some time already since I decided to be a bit of Vigilante Cyclist. Exactly on 21th December last yer I have made my first GoPro footage based report and a loads have happened since:

Depression is not something I would expect to feel. Not very often. I can clearly recollect moments in my life when it took over. Or maybe something else like grief or anger was there and depression was an easy label for them. But in general, my traces of psychopathic personality shielded me from it.

I never was an athletic type, but I enjoyed cycling. Having a road bike-like hybrid I conquered hilly, difficult roads and simple streets as well. Just before my wedding in 2013, I cycled 200 miles in two days around beautiful Szczecin Lagoon. Later in 2017, I cycled over 300 miles in 3 days and last year I wanted to cycle 500 miles in 5 days, but... my bike was stolen.

Every time I come back to this blog I used to have a massive vision of what I would do, how I will drive it further. Maybe: how I'd become another blogging world sensation. Let's be honest. This or most of other blogs never meant to be big. That are just our small pillows to cry our worries, shout our dreams and say our prayers. All the stress, pressure, burnout we can read around starts there. Setting too high expectations for ourselves and forgetting about a very simple thing - gratitude. But it's very important to say "thank you". Even if no one reads. Even if no one listens. It's important to say it to realise that there are so many good souls around us we often not value enough.

Let's face it: there are not enough opportunities for people with little commercial experience when at the same time there is massive undersupply of experienced developers. There is no way around it. Companies need to hire graduates and juniors and keep them as long as possible. Only that can keep the situation healthy and fair. But at the same time business is not a charity and we need people to be productive. There are many boot camps that promise you to get a job. Some of them work. I can believe someone after intensive React course can be productive for example for agencies. But that doesn't work for everyone. In most of our projects (in current and previous companies) we needed more flexibility and ability to learn than just given set of tools. There is a massive difference between being able to build a countless number of nice and performing UI using a predefined set of good tools and being able to build scalable and complex software systems. That's why React is good to find the first job that pays, but NodeJS is a way to get a well-paid job in the long run (even despite crazy React rates). Below I list things (virtues and knowledge) that if I find in graduate I vote for taking person immediately:

People dealing with rejection often allow their emotions to build new imaginary words. As they drew in denial or simply accept the change, they look for the guilt in others. It's very nicely explained in the book everyone should read - The subtle art of not giving a F*ck by Mark Manson .

I just came from a refreshing holiday. It wasn't restful by any means. No, it was quite a job looking after my two-year-old son while travelling. While the setting was lovely I did not sleep longer and actually, I was far more physically tired than usual (luckily all to allow my wife to rest a bit). All of that came with quite an unusual outcome. As thanks to the new job, I could finally after years enjoy wireless time off I lost much need to look into my social media accounts. I did it still, but much less than normal.

I decided to dig in my history and find records of my internet activity since the begining. And I've been here for a while, constantly rediscovering myself. Why I want to do? For myself, for my memories, but also to show how I developed so maybe someone can learn from it to. This post will be used as a list for research and will be updated continously...