The Weekly Digest Jan 22

Welcome to the weekly digest. A bunch of private thoughts, lessons, tidbits & resources from John Ochuro.

This was a fascinating week for me, and I learned a lot too. I also wrote three posts. I thought I would be able to write more, but two of them are unfinished ideas about hard work and generally what it means to work hard, and one of them is about my thoughts with the word “failure” that might never see the light of day. I’m also contemplating about what it means to get into technical writing.

3 Medium Posts from this week.

Anyways, you can read: Fake it Till You Make it! What it Really Means! — My post about some tools you can use to fight imposter syndrome, laxity, and push your dreams to success. What does it mean to work hard? — My thoughts on this concept of hard work , why I think that it’s an elusive thing, but also the most important thing in our careers and work life!. And In Light Of This New Information — My ethos on how to learn, and adapt given more information in this rapidly moving environment. I believe that if you don’t learn, adapt and pivot, you will die.

Long Walks on Railways

some of my cinematic photography walking along railways over the years.

This morning I took a walk like I always do. but this time, I went with my son for the first time. It was such an emotional trip for me man. I have spent so many hours walking on railways in my life. I take these walks to clear my head, realign perspective and meditate on new ideas. Maybe as my son grows up, I shall introduce him to this therapeutic activity.

#100DAYSOFCODE

You might remember I talked about, — in the beginning of last year — my desire to learn web technologies, and how I dove into the deep end, by getting a udemy course and watching hundreds of YouTube videos literally. Coming into 2022, I felt like I had a fair grasp of the languages, unlike when, I was a total newbie, and I could understand a lot of the code. Therefore, I wanted to give the Dev Challenge #100DAYSOFCODE a go.

I am excited to say that I already began. Today will be day 5. That means I started on Monday.

BedimCode Follow Along Project

Last year, I discovered, and started following a free coding project from BedimCode on YouTube & Github but never successfully finished any project. This year, I promised myself that for my 100days of Code, I shall start with that. It was extremely fascinating for me to do that.

I have already learned so much from following a simple code follow along project. Here’s what I have picked up:

• A look into the codebase of a professional web developer and how he/she has organized their project file, as well as how they have made comments.
• The naming convention on naming the classes and sections in the page. This is something I had no insight into. And if I were to just follow my knowledge from CSS basics, I would have never known there are naming conventions that are used as best practices.
• The thoughtful linking of all the aspects on the page.

My new challenge is mired with a lot of new learning. I think I need to launch a technical blog. I have contemplated writing my technical stuff in here (medium) or taking it to other developer focused blogs such as hashnode or devto or hackernoon. Really not sure how to handle my developer side vs my entrepreneurial-leadership side. I do think I am working on those two sides concurrently, and they are getting my attention almost in equal measure.

I however uploaded 2 of my workflow video on my second YouTube channel. This is the place where I have been learning the most in the last year, when I started publishing my learning. I have found that this YouTube channel to be one of the best efforts I ever started on the internet. This is mostly how I think I want to show up online. As someone who is constantly learning.

uploaded two of my workflow videos on my youtube page.

Ahmed Shadeed & Technical Writing!

I discovered a gem of a webpage while relearning about CSS, and this has been the page I have spent a lot of time on this week. I have read about ten or more articles from this man, Ahmed Shadeed on ishadeed.com . He writes about CSS. His core focus is on CSS, debugs it, writes about how it is evolving. He even has a book called debugging css — debuggingcss.com . I found this man to be totally fascinating.

While reading his stuff, I pondered a lot on his writing style, and how he talked about the things he found fascinating. I was reminded of the importance of reteaching information you already know in your own language, as the basis of technical writing. That basically, all you really need to do, is learn something, and then reteach it. Then discuss it. It will force you to be a better subject matter expert.

I promised myself to get started on this habit. Sure, it might take a while to clarify your language and to create new graphics, but you will grow exponentially from that. I also wondered, what else do I know that I could get into the habit of sharing, writing, and forcing my growth? These are some of biggest most recurring thoughts this week.

rwxrob on Twitch/YouTube & github!

If there is one person that has single handedly influenced how I think about coding and showing up to the screen to work has gotta be this guy! Dude has the craziest commits on github I have seen from anyone. Maybe this one is a real developer dude. This week I went by his channel just to catch up with what he was doing, and to remind myself, that in life you can get a lot done if you just show up consistently.

I dislike my video production gigs.

I do not believe I said that. I wrote on my journal, “ I really do not like my video job anymore!” and I was so shocked that I said that. I wondered to myself, hmm, why would I say something like this? surely it cannot be true!?

I think, and this is just a thought, that there are some careers, especially in my country or region that you can love, but it doesn’t love you back like you thought. I really feel the frustration of little or slow money that comes from such gigs. The glass ceiling that seems to be floating over you. It seems as though, there is a price ceiling that one might not easily be able to break.

I remember how in the beginning I was passionate about this world of video production. It does exactly feel like the way I feel about web development and web technologies. I spent countless hours, reading, researching, and dreaming up how my projects might be. Worked on a bunch of projects. Got some new information out of it, and even started a small time career / side hustle with it.

This thought came to me this week, when I shared with an old friend that I used to do video production and I still kinda do, that I even have two short mini series episodes I did with a crew back in 2016.

Then I finished my journal by saying, no matter what I feel about my skills, they are still my skills. I might not be interested in using them, but I have these skills, they are mine. It gave me some joy, but also, I just disliked that I felt this way about most of the things.

Giving Credit & Creating a culture of Growth.

I realize there are some gaps that I have brought in from my creative career. While I build or setup any team to do creative work, I will make sure to always include a crediting system that recognizes the efforts of people and a culture of learning and growth. I think, those are the two things I require from my work to feel satisfaction. The money is good too, but looking back to my creative career, if these three parts were well established into all the work that I did, I would find absolute satisfaction.

I would like to come back and explore this topic in detail. It’s top of mind now, even when I think about the skills and tools I need to provide for my team to keep working hard.

Other not so specific things I have thought about this week

1. Getting Massively Organized is deep chore that kills me.
2. I want to learn delegation and to outsource some of my irrelevant tasks for someone else to worry about them.

Some Other things I consumed this week that I liked

• I watched gangs of london — crime thriller with a lot of blood, swearing and brutal violence. At the end, it was like, if you think you’ve killed the big fish, there’s even a bigger fish to fry! I thought the writing was interesting enough.
• I also watched don’t look up the netflix comedy drama about the world coming to an end.
• “Investors” a documentary on honeypot’s YouTube channel, and this particular person in there said that venture capitalists don't want you to report a profit in 3 to 7 years, they want scale!- and I thought, whoa!, that is so weird and unique on how I think about investing. Especially coming from a small business owner. I wondered really, what then does massive growth look like? Is it sustainable?

I had an incredible week, and an even better time sitting down to make this reflection and a digest. I am so proud of myself for giving myself the permission to publish more.

I hope to publish in future with more graphics and links and images, but it’s taking a lot of my time to wind up, so Imma just hit publish.

Thank you for reading.