The importance of self improvement, or better: the awareness of inadequacy
Hello folks,
it has been a while since my last story: because of quarantine and moving to another city, I haven’t had enough time to stop and simply…think.
This time I won’t speak about tech, but a little bit about myself, about the journey that I did to become a developer and about my ambitions.
The first love is never forgotten
One of the first memories that I have is a computer: when I was 6 I used a PC for the fist time, a laptop made by HP.
I was too young to take relevant decisions, but I realised that computers would be my passion…and so it was.
I began to use PCs as leisure tools first, then as a learning tools and finally as job tools.
But…what was the path to get here?
Where it all began
The first line of code that I’ve ever written dates back to 2007, when I was 13: after a birthday party, a friend of mine (thank you, Stefano) introduced me to Visual Basic 6. He gave me a huge book and the IDE installer: I spent all the summer to learn that damn thing.
Don’t let anyone to choose your path
Regardless of the type of choice that you have to do, just remember one thing: your family, your boss, your partner or any other person should never take fundamental decisions about your future, you must do what makes you feel happy: you must find your reason to wake up in the morning.
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
Joseph Addison
When I was 16, I had a bad discussion with my mom about my education: she wanted me to continue with the scientific high school, whereas I wished to follow a course focused on information technology. We haven’t talked for weeks, but at the end I had what I wanted.
The same scenario happened when I opted to obtain “just” the BSc instead of MSc: I wanted to start putting into practice all that years of studies, and even in this case I won…but what did it cost?
Self improvement as a continuing challenge
In 2016 I began to work for GFT Italia S.r.l, and there I learnt that every kind of Italian public instruction would never be enough to be a professional software developer, so I started studying frameworks, patterns and best practices on my spare time.
I continue to think that it was a great decision; once a colleague asked me:
Why don’t you use your job time to learn something new?
The answer is quite simple: spending my free time in this way makes me happy, because I can control what to learn, the learn speed, how much do I need to deepen an argument…and I have full control of my growth path.
Do not let the day end without having grown a bit, without being happy, without having risen your dreams.
Walt Whitman
But all that glitters is not gold…
The awareness of inadequacy as side effect
In the last 2 years I had the opportunity to discover amazing people like Matteo Pasotti, luca mezzalira, Fabio Biondi and Michele Riva, people that help communities, people that write great articles, people who want to improve themselves every day.
Questioning yourself is the best way to understand others.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
So I started following their footsteps, but with poor results: the lacks of relevant experience and an unfortunate work situation made me start to feel inadequate to this milestone.
There is a fine line that divides self improvement from obsession and during the lockdown, unfortunately, I passed it.
How can I achieve that? How can I escape from this prison?
These are questions that I ask myself every day and I’ve found a way out: speak and knowledge sharing.
Words and ideas can change the world.
John Keating
I’ve always thought that one of a man’s greatest strengths is the people he surrounds himself with, but now I am convinced: sharing ideas, knowledge, opportunities or just your worries, is the best way to surround an obstacle and improve your vision of the world.
Humans relations first
Although relationships with your family or with your friends are not the best, I suggest you to work on it over time: if everything goes wrong, I am sure that they will be always there.
It’s important to divide your time between work and human relations, because when you are dead, only your loved ones will remember you: not for your presentations, your meetings or overtime, but for the time you spent with them.
Conclusions
As new year’s resolution, I would like to organise my routine following a general rule: use my spare time to build a better version of me.
What does it means?
Take care of the others, improve my skills, make new experiences, learn something new, know new people…something that will make me happy.
In the end, what we need is just to H.O.P.E.: Have Only Positive Expectations.
I wish you a happy new year and to spend the last days of December well.
Thanks for your attention.
