Progress (in the Face of Indecision)

I've been struggling lately.

Sometimes I find a sort of groove that makes me feel satisfied and productive. When I started learning to code at Bloc, I was in a groove, in the zone, in "flow" as they say. I was focused and constantly pressing forward with the web applications I was learning to build in Ruby and JavaScript. It felt like I was maintaining forward momentum pretty well, knocking out checkpoints and projects faster than the curriculum even required.

Now, as I work my way through the third–and easily hardest so far–unit in my Bloc course, Software Engineering Principles, I'm starting to feel strained, stuck, like I'm in a repetitive rut. This is probably in part because it's hard to keep momentum going on anything for over a year (it's hard to believe I started at Bloc in June 2016!), and in part because in many ways, I am in a rut. I go to work five days a week, I try to code at least a little bit every day, I try to exercise, I try to balance enjoying my life with pushing myself, I try to set aside uninterrupted time with my fiancee.

But then again, if this is what I want to do with my career, I need to be able to go to a job, sit down, and code for five or more days a week. The thing is, as much as that still sounds like a great goal to strive toward, I started writing again (stories in addition to blog posts), and it reminded me of how much more talented I am at writing than I am at coding.

I mean, of course I'm better at writing than coding; I've been writing since I was six years old or whatever, but I've only been coding since last year. But it's sometimes frustrating to think that I'm barely taking off the training wheels when it comes to coding, whereas I think I'm a pretty strong writer already. It doesn't help that the Software Engineering Principles unit of Bloc's course is by far the most sluggish of the first three, perhaps because it's harder and more abstract material,  perhaps because there's so much material that there's no opportunity to work on projects to add to my portfolio in this unit (and projects, even by my Bloc mentors' admission, are by far the most fun and engaging parts of the course), perhaps some of both.

So should I pursue a writing career? Should I pursue a coding career? Should I somehow meld the two together? This is the sort of thing that often paralyzes me and makes me struggle to proceed.

The solution I'm coming to, I think, is to always do something every day. Read and write for a day, code for a day, work for a day; but always, always, move forward. It's hard to say where it's all leading and what I want to do, but I know that I want to see Bloc through to the end.

After that I'll have to pick a direction. But for now I'm unsure of what that direction will be.

How I Started Running – And Why You Should, Too

A few weeks ago, I was flat-out exhausted. Perpetually. Between working at T-Mobile, studying software engineering at Bloc, writing blog posts, spending time with my fiancee, moving to a new apartment, and gearing up for my friend’s wedding, I felt like I was being pulled in a million directions.

My energy resource, since I’ve quit soda and energy drinks (minus the occasional root beer float), was coffee and any sugar I could get a hold of. I’d drink a cup in the morning (with sugar), a Soylent Coffiest drink somewhere during the day, and often a coffee in the afternoon (usually from Starbucks, also with sugar) to keep me going. As anyone who has drunk caffeinated and sugary drinks for any length of time can attest, this is a recipe for disaster. Aside from the more immediate negative results – caffeine and sugar both make you crash later in the day, and have been linked to anxiety –  caffeine and sugar are both addictive. One coffee used to be more than enough for me. Then it became two, then three, and it just kept getting worse.

Ultimately, the problem is that if you work at a retail store or a desk for a living, your job is not getting you enough exercise, and tasty foods are tasty. So we consume a bunch of sugar and caffeine, notice it wakes us up, and use it as fuel. This is obviously not a good way to keep your body energized, alert, and healthy, but we do it anyway because we feel we “don’t have time” to exercise.

Somehow, I doubt that that’s true for most people. If we can binge-watch 10-hour Netflix seasons, take 100 hours to beat a video game, or flip TV channels for 4 hours, we certainly have the time to exercise for 30 minutes to 1 hour. The problem isn’t that we don’t have time; the problem is that it sounds scary and painful when you’re out of shape to try and get into shape. You’ll tell yourself “my ribs hurt when I run too much” or that it’s not the right temperature outside. You’ll give yourself every excuse not to run today, and tell yourself instead that you’ll do it tomorrow – only for tomorrow to never come.

So that’s why I figured out a way to make running fun and easy for myself.

The first thing about building a good habit – exercising daily, spending time learning to code daily, writing a blog post daily, or learning to play the cello daily – is that if you previously did not do that thing regularly (or ever), you need to accept that you are currently not good at it. And that’s totally okay! How in the world would you be good at it if you’ve never done it?

Everyone, and I mean everyone, starts by being bad at whatever it is they want to do. Sure, some people maybe have a knack for certain things, perhaps because of how their mind is wired or how their body is shaped. But they don’t come out of the womb knowing how to play a sport or run a business or film a movie.

Unlike coding, which was almost completely new to me when I started with Bloc, I was actually a runner for a brief time (I ran track in junior high school). So it’s not that I didn’t know how to do it; it’s that I tried to kill myself on every run when I told myself “this time I’ll start running and won’t stop doing it.” The flawed logic in my head was that I hadn’t run for several months, so I needed to play catch-up, so to speak, and run really hard right out of the gate.

The problem is, I’d be miserable afterward. I’d be exhausted, not energized, and wouldn’t be looking forward to my next run. So I’d quit for three months, then try again.

But trying to run a six-minute-mile when you haven't gone on a run in months (or years) is like expecting to write like J.K. Rowling the first time you try to write a book. Of course you’re not as good as J.K. Rowling; she’s been writing for her entire life, long before she wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and she’s also gotten a lot of feedback ever since she made it her career.

So I decided the solution for me was to start small. I didn’t worry about distance; I figured if I kept moving my arms and legs, I would eventually get somewhere. Instead, I just focused on time – I told myself to keep running for 20 minutes (perhaps 10 or 30 is better for you, depending on your health; judge accordingly). I’d keep running even if I was running so slow I might as well walk, even if I felt terrible. I set my own pace for those 20 minutes (timed by my Apple Watch, with my phone sitting at home so no text messages were distracting me), and that’s it.

But you know what? When I did it this way, it wasn’t so bad. I was competing against myself, not people who could run ten miles at Colorado’s elevation because they’ve been running every day for a decade. I didn’t bring earphones, because I didn’t want to be thinking about the beat of the music playing. I just set my own pace, and enjoyed the sunny morning.

And since that wasn’t so bad, I rested for a day (thinking I deserved a reward for my effort) and went again for 20 minutes. And again, this time for 25 minutes. And again for 25. And again for 30. And so on.

So I’ve been doing 30 minute runs for a couple of weeks now, slowly noticing my distance-per-mile numbers improve naturally, and I feel great. I mean, we all know in the back of our heads that exercising is good for us, but we kind of forget just how much. The fact I hear thrown around a lot are that if you eat healthy, you lose weight, while if you work out, you gain muscle, and both in conjunction make you truly healthy. We’re often reminded that we’ll feel happier because of all the chemicals our bodies send out while we exercise – they even made a term for it, “runner’s high" (which is apparently caused by endocannabinoids, not endorphins. Who knew?). And exercising is known to lower your risk of getting 13 different types of cancer.

For me, that’s all been true (well, I guess I don’t know about the cancer, but I don’t seem to have it yet, so that's a good sign). But there’s much more that I notice about exercising regularly, which I’m sure we all vaguely know but many of us often forget. When I exercise regularly, I can tell the difference more clearly between when I’m hungry and when I’m just thirsty. I find it easier to recognize when I should stop eating and take that fancy restaurant meal home for leftovers. I find it easier to stay alert and focused during the day, yet I find it easier to fall asleep at night.

Generally, I find it easier to maintain lots of healthy habits, and I find it easier to be happy with myself. So my point is: exercise. Start slow. Don’t quit.

Post number 21.

Debit > Credit

American consumers are constantly inundated with ads for cars, smartphones, and credit cards. Credit cards have all that extra advertising money because, at first glance, they appear to be of much higher value than a debit card or cash when you need to go make a purchase (especially a large one). They offer cash back incentives, flier miles, and the ability to buy something without worrying about how much money is in your bank account right now. What more could a consumer ask for?

The thing is, credit cards are for the most part a terrible product, and I’m going to tell you why. I’m not as hardcore as Dave Ramsey on this topic, who would argue you should never own a credit card and you need to chop up the ones you have now before it’s too late, but the reason those cash back and flier mile promotions need to exist in the first place is that otherwise you would be far more hesitant to allow such a deceptive financial product into your life.

To begin, let’s start with the less rational reasons to use a credit card and work our way down the list. Perhaps the least rational is that you want an expensive product (a car, maybe a phone, maybe a game console or TV), and you want it now. You don’t actually have the money to afford it now, but you want it now anyway, so you put it on a credit card.

As just about anyone who’s ever carried a balance on a credit card can attest, this is probably the worst way to finance anything over a long span of time short of getting a payday loan. Yes, credit cards often start with a 0% interest rate, but these tend to last about a year or so, and the minimum payments the credit card company will ask you for won’t pay off most large purchases in a year (if ever—some credit cards are organized in such a way that the minimum payments will never pay off the balance). After that first year, suddenly the interest rate on your credit card is likely to rocket up to 20% or so, which is an absolute joke.

Now, let’s say you didn’t make a knee-jerk, unwise decision to buy something you can’t afford, and your reason for using a credit card is to get the flier miles and cash back rewards. This is… a little more sensible. It’s not even remotely sensible if you carry a balance on your 20% interest credit card to get 2 or 3% cash back, and most frequent flier miles on credit cards are never redeemed. But it’s at least understandable to want the rewards if you pay off your credit card consistently (which most Americans don’t; we collectively have over $900 billion in credit card debt as of March 2016).

So yes, there’s a select few in there (who pay off their credit card every week or two, never spending more than is currently in their bank account, and simply take advantage of the cash back rewards) who use credit cards in a way that’s not a complete and total scam. But even for these select few, a word of caution: putting things on credit is a slippery slope. It’s very easy to convince yourself you’ll pay something off soon and then put it off until later, or to buy something pricey that you can afford now, but then have a financial setback that forces you to put off paying the credit card balance, and next thing you know, you have a monthly bill with interest on top (for crises, you should really have an emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses, but I digress).

You should also be honest with yourself about whether you’re really part of this select group in how you manage your credit card(s) or not. Do you really pay off those cards every month, never spending more than you have in your bank account right this second, or do you make exceptions on a regular basis? Statistically, people are known to spend more when they use a credit card than when they use a debit card or cash. Do you really spend money the same way with your credit card, or do you give yourself more leeway because you don’t have to pay off that credit card today?

I’m not saying you should never, ever get a credit card. Cash back rewards are nice, and some store cards have some nice discount perks. Plus, if you pay off the balance on your card consistently, you can build up a good credit score, which is a silly metric but nonetheless gives you far more options with your financial future than having a bad or nonexistent credit score.

Generally, I agree with Dave Ramsey on this. We’ve overvalued the credit card (and the generally mediocre rewards that come with them) and undervalued buying things with cash you have right now, whether that’s in actual cash or debit card form. The problem with Ramsey’s advice in some instances is that it tries too hard to be a one-size-fits-all solution when some folks are capable of being responsible with a credit card and are regularly, so they might as well have more options to finance a home in the future or take out a loan if they’re in a bad spot.

But ultimately, the point about how bad credit cards are as a product stands—especially when it comes to expenses that are frivolous, frequent, or extremely costly. The rewards are usually negligible, it’s easy to indulge yourself and buy things you can’t afford when you use them, and you should not mistake “I can barely scrape by making monthly payments on my debts” for being financially healthy. Being financially healthy means you have very few monthly payments and you could lose your job tomorrow without wondering how you’ll pay rent next month, and credit cards aren’t known for helping people achieve that goal.

Like so many things in life, the simpler your finances are, the better they are. We tend to overcomplicate things like our finances and think that somehow makes us clever. But don’t kid yourself: the cleverest people have no running balances and no fear about paying next month’s rent.

Post number 20.

Fantasy, For Me

It’s easy to look at the entertainment industry and say that what it produces is pointless or stupid (“entertainment industry” here meaning creative content such as books, music, movies, TV shows, paintings, video games, musicals, plays, and so forth; we tend to draw some arbitrary line in our minds between what we deem to be junky and useless, which falls under some less-impressive name like “entertainment,” while the stuff we value is deemed “art,” but we’ll mash it all together and call it entertainment for now). I have no hesitation with remarking on my disdain for reality TV, professional sports, Call of Duty, most pop music, most comedy movies, and anything made by Michael Bay or Stephenie Meyer.

Of course, we all have tastes such as these, and a lot of people like the things I just mentioned, even if only in a guilty pleasure kind of way. My tastes, fortunately, have broadened over time; as a kid, I tended to only consume entertainment through any medium if it was a fantasy story. I loved Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, which meant that I thought books and movies were valuable entertainment mediums while TV was not. I loved The Legend of Zelda, so I thought adventure games, especially as made by Nintendo, were the only ones that were really fun or worth playing.

Since then, I’ve reassessed some things. I love Silicon Valley, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul, for example, which made me value TV shows, and I don’t like fantasy just because it’s fantasy so much anymore (I don’t like Game of Thrones much, for example; to me, good stories are about compelling characters, and I can’t get too attached to characters who keep dying, plus I wanted to read the books first and that’s no longer an option).

But when you add it all up, fantasy is still my go-to genre. I loved Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I enjoyed The Hobbit movies, although they fell short of Lord of the Rings (but then again, the book does, too). I am slowly drawing near to the end of The Wheel of Time, which is a pretty good book series if you have a few years to kill reading all fourteen massive volumes, and then will be moving on to more of Brandon Sanderson and Stephen King’s excellent writing (I’m super stoked for The Dark Tower!).

Last but not least, I’ve fallen back in love with Zelda on 3DS and Wii U (I got rid of all my video games thinking I needed to grow up, and then recognized that it’s dumb to throw things away that bring you joy unless those things are addictive substances). I’m playing Breath of the Wild on Wii U, and I’m sure I’ll get a Nintendo Switch someday, but for now I’m loving being lost in Hyrule on the consoles I have, which, wonderfully for me, can play the whole library of past single-player Zelda games in addition to the new ones.

Something that Breath of the Wild brought to my attention, though, is why fantasy is my genre. Early in the game, Link gets a Sheikah Slate, which is basically a smartphone with an interactive map of Hyrule and a camera. While it’s dead useful in the game and largely unobtrusive, I don’t really like that Link has a smartphone- he didn’t need one to seal Ganon in the Sacred Realm in Ocarina of Time, now did he?

The reason fantasy stories are so great for me- be they novels, movie series, or video games- is that they take me away from the modern world, entirely. They encapsulate me in magic spells, fictional worlds, things that can’t be real, a completely different universe. Others likely look for media that’s intentionally familiar to them, and as I said before, I’ve enjoyed media that can theoretically happen, like Breaking Bad, in more recent years. But for me, fantasy is pure escapism, and that’s a good thing. It works a lot better when the fantasy characters don’t have smartphones.

Perhaps it’s my method of distracting myself from things that are stressing me out. I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, so maybe it’s an alternative way for me to cope when I’m in a bad mood, and I suppose fantasy media is better than a drug addiction.

But I guess this is why I had a hard time writing fantasy novels when I was trying for so many years. I couldn’t figure out what was appealing about them to me, and now that I do realize what the appeal was, I suppose I would rather build something that can help people fix their problems than distract them from those problems, although that’s sometimes an admirable thing to do.

This is probably a description of storytelling- “distracting people from their problems”- that undervalues storytelling. Stories have great value in their ability to connect us. They allow us to feel how others feel, so we can empathize. They are the best way for us to learn- put a story behind a bunch of numbers and they become far more interesting than the numbers can ever be on their own.

Nonetheless, if I want to do something with my career, I want to clearly be able to convey why. It’s not enough for me to say that I do something “because I can’t not do it.” I need more clarity, more coherence. But storytelling, if it’s going to be a part of my life, needs to be more than just a story for the sake of a story. It needs to make people reflect and think about themselves and the world around them. It needs to do more, which is why I am slowly beginning to come to the conclusion that I want to combine the art of storytelling with software development, somehow. I feel that that can elevate both the software and the story.

…But more on that later.

Post number 19.

Time and Money Management

Living in an eternally-connected world is great in a lot of ways. Getting in touch with someone instantly, or being just a click or tap away from knowing what’s happening in distant parts of the world, is an incredible power we all now wield without thought. Studies have claimed that your average citizen with a smartphone has more access to information than the President had in 1980, and I’m inclined to believe them.

The problem is that when we have access to so much information, it becomes too easy to lose focus. Daniel Goleman, in his book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, argues that we are crippling our productivity because we have such limited focus. Can you read this article from beginning to end without glancing at Facebook, text messages, or email? Have you already lost focus?

I can tell you that I’m no exception to this rule. Even while writing this article, text messages have interrupted my train of thought, transporting me elsewhere. Hyper-connected technology is like a CandyLand for our minds; lots of shiny objects and distractions with little preventing us from devouring more and more.

It’s a struggle for me these days to stay focused and disciplined. Sometimes I think back on when I was a kid (wow, I must be getting old), when we were all less connected. When fewer people had smartphones, you often called people and wound up getting their voicemail unless they happened to be home. Need to pick your kid up from soccer practice? There’s no texting them to see if they’re done; they don’t have a phone. You’ll just have to remember the time and go at the appropriate point. And don’t count on turn-by-turn directions to tell you how to get there if they had to use a different field today. You need to figure that out from memory, a map (as in, a paper one), or maybe MapQuest if you have an internet connection… at home, on your desktop computer.

Like other problems people in first-world societies have, we all want a one-size-fits-all solution. Just look at how “personalities” (as they’re called) like Dave Ramsey approach fixing your personal finance woes: follow my advice and you’ll be debt free soon and wealthy soon after! Or how Tony Robbins approaches becoming rich: read my books and attend my expensive seminars and you’ll be just as “successful” as me! (Successful is in quotes here because the underlying implication is that we all measure success by our bank accounts and social status).

Dave has some good tips for how to manage money, don’t get me wrong, and I don’t have anything against Tony Robbins personally. But with how different people’s personalities are, with the many factors that could impact their decision-making and personal situation, you can’t come to the conclusion that there’s a trusted, proven set of steps that result in becoming successful, however we are to measure that.

Take me for example. Dave tells me to chop up my credit cards, build a $1000 emergency fund, pay off all my debts from smallest balance to largest balance (he says the psychological wins matter more than the interest rates), make a bigger emergency fund when I’m done with the debt “snowball,” invest in mutual funds and real estate with all the money I’m saving, and spend the rest of my life making lots of money.

This is probably an easier thing to accomplish if your income is high to begin with, or if you don’t have $100,000 of debt to try and manage (like me), the vast majority of which is student loans. As it is, I get by well enough, but not in a pay-$100,000-of-debt-off-in-a-year kind of “quite well.”

Dave has some good points in his baby steps to wealth, don’t get me wrong. If you’re going to use a credit card (for discounts at some stores and cash back at others), you should certainly be doing it to actually utilize the benefits of the card, you should certainly pay it off every week, and you certainly should not do it to buy something you couldn’t buy with the money in your checking account right now. Splitting things up into payments, especially with interest on top, is a ludicrous way businesses have us all convinced that we can afford things we can’t, because unless that thing you put on payments is real estate, it is 100% guaranteed to lose value. Sure you can “afford” the monthly payments (and by that I mean “barely pay them on time”), but a much more responsible way of managing money is to think like this: if you can’t afford to buy it outright, you can’t afford it period.

Long story short, the problem isn’t really the credit cards; it’s the lack of self control people have when using the credit card. Some people bring in a good amount of money and have nothing to show for it; others bring in little to no money and have even less to show for it. Why? We’ve been taught to put things on payments, because “Greed is good,” as Gordon Gekko would say, because marketing tells us we need to buy first and think second.

Anyway, doing some easy math, I’ve figured that Dave’s debt snowball method will take me about five years to accomplish. My fiancee and I are well on our way, but should we really wait five years before we do any saving or investing outside of that first $1000? Dave says “focused intensity” will get us out faster. I can eat ramen every day and double my debt snowball’s size, and it’ll still take me two-and-a-half years to pay off that debt load, which I have no interest in doing. Yes, I want to be debt-free, but I also don’t want to be miserable for years on end. I don’t think any financial advisor would tell me I should wait five years before saving or investing, so I’ve started doing both now. That way, those numbers start to compound while I hack away at the debt pile.

Really, the solution for me is to do the debt snowball, but with some caveats involving saving, investing, and building a more lucrative career to accelerate the other elements in my financial life. Dave had good advice, but it’s not the exact, perfect solution for me. It might be for you, and it might not. I’d give it a look anyway on his website, but tailor it to your needs, don’t follow blindly.

Teaching good time management is a similar beast. I wish I could tell you I knew a secret way to manage your time better, but I don’t. For some of you, setting up a calendar that you strictly follow that alots for personal time, family time, and blocked-off productive time with no social media distractions is a good solution. For others, maybe limiting your distractions will make a difference, but setting up the schedule would be such a chore and you’ll have such a hard time following it that it’ll do little more than stress you out. There’s certainly scientific research proving that regardless of age and gender, we are all very bad at multitasking, so I would certainly recommend doing one thing at a time, but beyond that, all bets are off. Your personality is likely not the same as mine (I’m an INTJ, if you’ve done a Myers-Briggs test), so the method that will make you most efficient with your time is almost guaranteed to differ from my optimal approach.

For me, I think building a consistent routine is important, because if I don’t, I’m anxiously thinking about how I haven’t been productive enough all day long. If I spend one part of the day focusing on writing or coding without interruption, another part knocking out errands or looking for writing and software jobs, and still another relaxing and enjoying my life, I’ll likely come out ahead. But that might not apply to you.

Better advice than “do this, it’s the perfect solution” is to consider how others approach a problem you face, try it, and if it works, keep doing it. If not, try something else. Stephen King’s advice regarding how to write novels, in his fantastic On Writing book, is this sort of advice. Nowhere in it does King say “this is exactly how to write and be as successful as me.” He tells you the reader that this is his method: come up with an interesting setting, interesting characters, and mash them together and make them interact. Write 2000 words a day, every day, even on holidays, letting the characters drive the story instead of building a planned-out plot in advance. Maybe it will work for you, maybe it won’t. Hell, he even points out that other writers don’t do this and make great books; J.R.R. Tolkien planned out every word of The Lord of the Rings before writing a single chapter, and King loves the Rings trilogy. Every writer writes at a different pace, and has a different way to drive the story all the way to its conclusion.

The problem with managing your time, your money, your relationships, your career, anything in life, is of course that you and you alone can find the solution, and while it’s all well and good to listen to advice, there’s no magic answer to any of these problems. We as humans love to blame the economy, the government, our family, our boss, or whoever the best scapegoat is for our problems, but ultimately the problem is our own to solve. A minor change in the effective tax rate is not going to make or break you; going out to eat every night will have far more effect on your bank account than any President will. Since Facebook is designed to be easy to scroll through and get lost in, it’s easy to blame Facebook for killing our focus. But ultimately it’s you who clicked on the app icon and started scrolling, which means you need to find a way to stop letting it distract you when focus is what you need in the moment.

It is personal responsibility, then, that we must learn in order to manage our problems, not how to blame others or how to follow a multi-step, perfectly-designed program someone made up. That’s the cold, hard truth that self-help books and seminars aren’t going to tell you.

But in reality, what does that mean? That means that Dave Ramsey or Tony Robbins does not hold the keys to your financial and career success. You do. The bozos in Congress and the White House don’t control your life. You do. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, you-name-it doesn’t manage your time. You do.

You are in control, and you can make the right choices and the right changes to make your life amazing. And that’s way better than any other scenario could be.

Post number 18.