Resetting Myself: A Personal and Professional Journey

HAPPYY MONDAYY!!!

I had a feeling that I had to memdump this out of my brain. Because I need to reset myself from the stress and challenges of life.

The Weight of Transition

As you have probably heard a million times from my previous blogs — yes, I recently ended my last work engagement and I'm open to work once again. This immediately brought me two kinds of stress: the healthy and unhealthy kind.

First, the unhealthy. My disconnection from that engagement brought me worries and problems like, your day job pays your bills, brings food to the table. How are we going to solve that? Actually it is bigger than I thought it would be. The timing just wasn't right.

Here in the Philippines, every day is a battle for your life. Gas prices are soaring high. My electrical bill is high because I'm running my own infrastructure for my own needs and career needs. And I have recently moved out to Laguna, living on my own with my partner. So the pressure doubles down because I'm basically on my own now. So it was very hard.

But before this blog post turns into a sour shareout, I just want to say thank you to that last work experience. It was a good challenge for me. I learned new technologies, new programming languages. And heck — I was able to improve my skills too and improve my infrastructure as well. Bringing in new dev toolkits that only I was using, at least if I were to compare to my circle of network.

Even if my time with them was short, I believe I was able to deliver what I was expected to deliver, even if my efforts weren't recognized well enough. Nonetheless, if my former Team Leads, Project Managers and co-developers are reading this — special thanks to you. Because of you, my stay feels like the best no matter if we were in the ups or downs of that project. Thank you.

The Healthy Kind of Stress

Now going back to the main topic — I haven't still dumped the healthy kind of stress that I am experiencing. To be honest, after that disconnect, I never felt so free. Like my vision became clear again and I was able to focus on myself.

My brain is like: You have a lot of backlogs to do now that you are free. Do this now.

So I am stressing myself to finish the backlog, because I know it won't be long and I'm sure I'll be back to the races of the day job.

First and foremost, I am forcing myself to do daily exercise to bring back my health, which I kinda lost with the lack of work-life balance — ahemmm. Which is good.

Next is this: my personal blog and personal projects. Previously, even if I tried, I lost grasp of time to allocate some of it to my personal improvements. I wasn't able to post new blog posts. And I wasn't able to develop new fun projects for me, even if there are only a few who acknowledge them. It is because it is fun to code and develop projects. And it is so much fun now because AI made it easier. Creating fun projects is like the icing on a cake — it keeps myself in tiptop shape as always.

And lastly — the blog posting itself. It has grown on me back in the early years of my career, that I love the kind of stress that comes from teaching or sharing my own technical knowledge and experience to other people. Hence I have a few public engagements as a mentor or speaker in my portfolio. And I miss that.

Since I haven't got any public engagement yet, I will just vent out in my own blog posts for others to read. Just like this one. Hihi.

The Intervu Story — And What It Taught Me

Now before this blog post turns into an emotional shareout of my disconnection and stress, let me go back to the main topic: reset.

So yes, I will use this time to have myself reset while I am still disconnected from any engagement. What triggered this? Remember my recent post with the Intervu app?

Yes, I kinda posted that while being very emotional before the disconnection. I thought that since I'm open to work once again, I have too few full-stack projects to showcase. So right after the disconnection, I immediately developed Intervu in the context of showcasing my skillset.

Which got me in the opposite direction.

Due to emotion, I temporarily lost my vision — to be a Technical Architect that still writes code.

If creating Intervu is for proving myself that I can code, I got myself backwards. If the question is if I can code and develop software, I have proven that to the whole world already, long long longggg time ago. Even before the agentic AI software development era, I was able to ship software and projects with just sweat, tears, and coffee. No AI. No agentic coding. No autocomplete. Just me, myself, and my coffee.

And we won several competitions with my craft. I won programming competitions back when I was young. So I have really proven myself already long long longggg time ago.

So what did I miss?

I Missed the Bigger Picture

I want to be an architect. An architect who designs flawless systems at scale! BUT! A technical architect who still writes code.

WHY?

It's my lore. Whether it's writing high-level code or just as simple as wiring things up physically — I want to solve problems and create solutions for them that are automated, auto-heals, and most importantly gives bliss and satisfaction. Because first, I was able to solve the problem. And secondly, I was able to challenge myself and I was able to learn.

That's why I want to be a technical architect that still writes code. Because coding and designing go hand in hand. Some architects are great at designing systems at scale. YES! But are you sure it is really possible by code?

That's why I believe coding and designing go hand in hand. And for me to be a great leader, I must be two roles combined as one — a technical architect and at the same time, an engineer.

So Where Am I?

I did ask myself for the past few weeks, multiple times: So where am I?

So yes, for the past few weeks, I was evaluating my actions and the current situation of the industry.

With AI, every opportunity has heavenly-grade requirements. When I say heavenly, I mean the requirements seem almost impossible to achieve for that certain category. As if a person with level 100 is looking for opportunities, and all of a sudden all the job postings for level 100 candidates have requirements for level 1000.

Talking about a higher barrier of entry.

So how does that apply to me?

Going back to the Intervu app — the lore of making the app is to support people with best technical skills but average speaking skills, such as myself. Well, I can't blame it. If the industry nowadays is asking for level 1000 requirements for a level 100 job posting, everyone will be more focused on technical skill-up.

But for me, I had it backwards. I already proven myself in technical capabilities, even before the AI era. And looking at my long-term goal to be a technical architect but still writes code — I am still lacking one expertise:

Soft skills.

The soft skills that marketing, sales, and other related specializations are great at — I figured out I need that too.

Because as everyone told me that I am great enough already, and I was already being called a "Master" by nickname because I am great with technical skills — but I am no master yet in soft skills.

For some who are also technical might see me as a 10x developer or a level 1000 developer. But for someone who just met me might just see me as a 0.1x developer or a level 10 developer because I can't showcase myself well enough. Even though at the back of my mind I'm telling myself: You are already used to that technology, heck you already have them running on your own infrastructure — so why didn't you tell them?

Well, it wasn't because I was nervous. I lack the methodology to convey and picture my skills properly.

The Reset Plan

So that is it. I was able to write this blog. I was able to brain dump myself in the works of resetting myself. Yeyyyy!

So I guess — good luck to me, to my skilling up, and to my future engagements and projects.

I am very much aware that disconnecting from my previous job puts me in a very challenging position. Because the current market is so saturated that fresh grads are near impossible to land a job. I have great experience, yes — but so does the competition.

But I'm confident in myself and I believe I can land my next projects in no time. In the meantime, I will just take this time to reset and hone myself more.

A Recommendation For Those Stressed

And for those who are stressed out because of your job hunting or your career altogether — I highly recommend the Mel Robbins podcast at YouTube.

I recently watched this one, hence I'm doing this blog post as a memdump to de-stress myself and having a clearer picture of the things I should have done. I don't mind watching podcasts that range from religious to philosophy — but the Mel Robbins podcasts are very insightful.

For me, it's like configuring my soft skills but in a technical manner. So I know I'm learning something. Heck, there's another video I love that gives me a template on how to answer the interview question: Tell me about yourself.

That's All For Now

So that is all for my Monday memdump post. So Happy Monday! Good luck to all and see you on my next blog post!