A quick introduction:

I’m really excited to start this blog, for a few reasons as you’ll see, but I wanted to first preface this with saying: don’t worry, this isn’t just a “New Year’s Resolution Blog (TM)".

As some of you may know, I am currently in San Francisco, officially. I flew here on December 31, so I welcomed 2016 in my new, partially set up apartment. I moved out here for the time-being to pursue a Software Engineer Fellowship at Hackbright. This is a pretty interesting time for me, in the last three days I…

  • …got a local cellphone number
  • …visited my favorite tea place
  • …started spelling “favorite” without the “u”, apparently
  • …went for a jog in the rain
  • …climbed more hills than during the Tough Mudder
  • …rediscoved pennies and why we no longer have them in Canada
  • …set up this blog on Jekyll (!!!)

So a pretty archetypal San Francisco/overall American experience. Amidst all of the frenzy of coming out here, I feel like I’ve forgotten to thank the people around me who have supported me in this exciting new adventure (and by “feel like I’ve forgotten”, I really mean “I totally ignored all my wonderful family and friends”). So, this post is, first and foremost, dedicated to them, the world’s most fantastic people — I couldn’t achieve anything without them.

Secondly, I want to say how excited I am for this fellowship (yes, this is turning out somewhat like an Oscar speech — “first, I’d like to thank my family and friends…"). Seriously though, I am very much looking forward to the idea of immersing myself completely in coding and working towards becoming a software engineer. I have no idea what it’s going to be exactly, but I do know that I’ll be learning alongside some brilliant ladies and we’re going to build cool stuff together — that alone is enough to get me all fired up and ready to go!

Lastly, I wanted to talk a little bit about the purpose of this blog and some of the things I hope to write about (a “content strategy” if you will, or a.k.a “why you should care/read”). The topics I’m hoping to cover here will be roughly distributed as follows:

A good portion of you who are reading this blog (hi mom!) will likely be the said fantastic, supportive family and friends I’ve dedicated this post to, so I’d like this to be a way for me to let all of you know how I’m doing as I trudge along (don’t worry mom, I’m still eating and breathing!).

Since, ultimately my goal is to become a software engineer, I’ll have one or two thoughts about the world of technology from time-to-time. I hope to cherrypick the ones I find most compelling and share them with you. Feel free to discuss them with me and provide your critiques, I’m here to learn as much as I can.

I’ll be doing a lot of that here, so I’m definitely going to talk about it. I want to share some thoughts around coding and also learning code as an adult without a CS background. While on a broad level, the general pillars of success such as perserverence, resourcefulness, and grit still apply to learning code, I suspect there are more granular aspects unique to coding and there are likely some personal insights that can be gathered around those.

While there are already entire publications dedicated to this idea and this is not the primary highlight for this blog, as a member of this demographic, I will likely end up somehow sharing my quarter-life crisis, struggles with finding the “bliss” in my life, and other such “coming-of-age” highlights. I think that these are common themes that come up when reflecting, but I also understand there are already so many more credible explorations around these ideas and it may be a little tired for me to add to them. So I’ll try to only throw my hat in the ring if I feel I have something worthwhile and of course, as always, feel free to critique.

Those who know me know I love to eat and drink coffee, so I will occassionally highlight some discoveries I make out here. If you have any suggestions for me, I’m all for trying new things, so hit me! Or better yet, come along if you happen to be in the Bay Area!

I haven’t even fully started this thing and I’m already thinking future iterations (welcome to the world of Doria!). As I keep writing, I’ll be keeping tabs on the way this blog evolves and speak to any significant shifts it might go through. I don’t really foresee anything major in the near future, but it’s definitely something I am keeping in the back of my mind. For now, I will focus on generating content and bringing in a comment system, so I can gather as much feedback as possible. Your thoughts will also help dictate my writing, so I really do appreciate any comments and feedback you might have!

Thank you for reading the inaugural post of my blog, cheers! 🍻