Everything is going to be all right

Hi, me again. I'm here to tell you that everything will be all right. My last post was dramatic, and I expressed frustration after receiving bad news.

It's OK to feel that way—there's nothing to be embarrassed about. We just need to be positive and grateful. Even if that feels like a failure, it is not. You just gained experience.

I think somehow I passed a small episode of depression. But I feel better now. What has changed? Nothing specific; I continue pushing commits.

Seeing job offerings now, I might need to change my stack. This can be taken on two different sides: panic because you need to learn something new, and now the seniority you have developed over the years is outdated, or a new opportunity to start a new path and reinvent yourself.

The software development industry is evolving fast. How many frameworks that claim to be the solution for our needs have been abandoned? How many new programming languages are out there compared to the ones available when we started our careers? Staying up to date is tough, and making the right decisions about your career path is important.

Don't get me wrong. I like to learn new things, but only if they add value to my career. Before I moved to Ruby, I did PHP. At that moment, the company I worked for decided to change its stack, so we left PHP (something we were very good at) to start our journey in the Ruby world. Even in that moment, it didn't feel right, in the end it was one of the most critical decisions that made a difference for us with all other companies around us. Everybody was doing PHP; nobody knew Ruby at all.

That also brings their challenges: how do you sell something nobody knows? It demanded creativity from our side but was a success for a long time.

We can adapt ourselves to any context. We can reinvent ourselves to succeed and make that difference. While we have that ambition for success and growth, everything is possible.

So, I survived this once; I can do it again. Everything is going to be all right.