Tears

Today, I cried.

Just two days ago, I was banging my head on the desk, I felt so frustrated that I knew I was about to breakdown and cry.

It's been a week since I last had any progress on KeithBot, the project that I've been working on, I couldn't get anything to work, and people around me were using different technologies so they weren't able to help me either. It's really embarrassing, but I cried a little because of programming.

Before I started KeithBot, a project that I was assigned to develop by myself, I chose all the technologies that I was passionate about rather than technologies that my colleagues are using. I was stubborn.

They used Angular, I chose React.

Someone had experience with Apache Solr, I chose ElasticSearch.

As you can see, very stubborn I was.

It wasn't too bad initially, because I could normally get past the obstacles that was presented in a day at most. But I hit a wall last week. I was trying to connect the client side that I have written to my server side. React to SignalR. I failed miserably... Zero progress in one whole week. "Sometimes you think you are making zero progress. You never really are. As long as you're trying, you're making progress. You just don't see it yet. So don't give up just yet and push on" - David Park

Today, I cried. This time though, it was different, it was tears of joy.

I managed to integrate and run both client side and server side together.

Both server and client are not connected yet, but this is a lot of progress for me. I was sad for the longest time because I thought I had learned nothing. Fact is, I've learned to use Webpack to bundle all my files into a single file, I understood the technologies a lot more than I've ever thought I would. Of all things, I've learned to never give up.

I walked into work every single day, and worked my butt off to search for a solution. Changed my code countless times. Tried so many different solutions that broke my program again and again. The constant feeling of self-doubt was horrible, absolutely devastating.

Negativity is scary. It is able to constantly pull us down and press us onto the floor. We tend to lose sight of hope, thinking that there isn't any. We have to learn how to navigate through darkness with the faith that one day we'll find that tiny beam of hope. And when we catch sight of it, grasp onto it and never let go.

It was that small radiant light of hope that shined through my field of darkness. That small progress that I was able to feel, made all the bad times seems like nothing.

That every single struggle was worth it.