What was my motivation?

Before explaining more about my motivation, I will share with you some things that happened.
I was working in a company where I had a terrible manager and it really hurt me very psychologically but as my grandfather always said that bad things happen so those good things can happen too. (I want to explain that it was just one person ok?)
After all that, good things came, I got married and my husband and I left Brazil and now we live in Ireland.

I lost the job offer which came here, I started looking at vacancies, talking to people and understanding the requirements then my motivation came: I NEEDED TO PRACTICE

But why did I decide to practice? Why did I pass and still pass being the person who doesn't know how to interact very well with code?
I always worked with infrastructure so I decided to practice a little more programming.

What I decided to practice:

• Data Structures and Algorithms;
• Ruby and Rails;
• A little Python;
• Also a little Go;
• Some things about IaaC (Insfrastructure as a Code) that were still blurry for me.

Day 001

That day I decided to remember and practice basic things like numbers, strings, methods and data structures.
That day was very ok, I got the Ruby documentation and some more tutorials.

Day 002

I started to study more deeply about data structures but I lost focus and went to practice Object Orientation, that day I realized that I was losing focus very quickly.

Day 003

I decided to do some TDD exercises on the Exercism.io platform and I had some difficulties because the exercises even being level 'easy' involved algorithms.

Day 004

I did more exercises on the exercism platform and then went to read about tests and RSpec. Then I realized something, I was totally unfocused, with back pain because of poor posture and a lot of anxiety.

I had serious problems with anxiety, we had to visit apartments, do documents, interviews in English. I also had a lot of headaches because of the cold and also because of the language.

Day 005

I did a few more exercises in exercism and then I started making the code for the raffle of gifts from RaislGirls Porto Alegre.

Day 006

As my husband also works with technology and is also doing the challenge I went to help him solve a Sudoku, it was very challenging I think I spent a couple of hours (or more) doing the code.

I was reflecting on my lack of focus.

Day 007

I did a few more exercises, this time on leetcode and exercism too. To solve the initial problem of the focus I made a small study plan which involved studying architecture, data structures and algorithms and Ruby (obviously).

Day 008

After organizing the studies, I actually started to study them, did more exercises (leetcode and exercism) and then showed Ruan (@rlnunes - my husband) how GitLab CI works.

Day 009

That day I decided to focus on architecture and data structures, you know why? I failed in the Facebook interview for not knowing data structures and algorithms, I felt extremely bad for not knowing these things ...
After a tip from a friend I adopted the pomodoro method to stay focused and put in Google tasks what I am studying with some deadlines.

Day 010

I finished a short course on hexagonal architecture and it was very enlightening, I continued studying data structures and ruby. I put the codes on GitHub and GitLab.

What I've learned.

• I learned that it's okay for me to stop for a few days, we're not machines right?
• I also learned that it's okay for me not to know certain things.
• I don't need to be in a hurry !!!
• We are not Super Heroes!

Links that I have used to study:

LeetCode
Exercism
Data Structures