Ive been thinking to myself a lot lately. As I turned 29 last October of 2017, I was looking back over my life reflecting and looking into how my future was looking. In the moment I felt as if it had no direction. I reflected on my past experiences, my skills, where I've been, and how I got here. To me it seems I have just let life go by and take control of me. I've heard many times through different keynote speakers that "life is the sum of the choices you make" as well as "your environment is a direct reflection of your self".If both of these statements reign true then that means two things that I need to consider. What choices have I been making to end up where I am, and why is my environment not adding up to my ideas or thoughts I have of where I want to be.First thing I think I had to look to were what choices have I made in my life. When I think about my life I can't really solidify significant choices I made to make a difference to where I am now. In other words, the choices that I have made where only decisions for the present time and not thinking of what my future could hold or look like. One thing I think I really had to reflect on with the statement of choices is "the choices I make".It seems I might have overlooked this growing up because I believed in the back of my mind I was looking for someone to help guide me in life to show me the way and path to go like a great teacher or a master leading a monk down the road to enlightenment. But in reality it's "my choice"Life certainly gave me a rude wake up call and its taken me more years to learn this lesson than I believe could have been prevented. Life is not fair and honestly everyone is not thinking about your well being. So it is up to me to decide and choose what and where I want to be in life and look to get the help myself. No one is going to come and hand you a manual and say "hey this how you do life". Its not that simple.I thought of the choices I made growing up like watching specific tv shows and doing just enough to pass my classes in order to get by for today and enjoy time now. I wasn't thinking futuristically on how I could set my self up strategically with skills to being able to market myself properly to companies or clients. However, thinking back I thought I did. In fact, I grew up learning how to cut hair, draw, and putting things together as an inventor/engineer would.Yet, I don't see anything that really reflects that significantly. I believe looking back I overlooked one thing with all these skills. I never stuck with one thing long enough to see it through. I learned the skill but never saw to developing it to become great at it. I wasn't building one central skill but becoming more a jack of all trades.So problem one solved.Second, if my environment is a direct reflection of myself, knowing that, how am I where am today? Well I think it goes back to the first statement "my life is a sum of the choices I make". I think these statements correlate. If my choices are not defined and distinctive to me and how I want to live my life, then Im just going to accept the choices that are presented to me not really knowing or looking that there are so many other choices that I can choose from.For example, if you go to a restaurant and only look at the menu you think thats all they have, but what if you ask your waiter a specific question as "is there any chef specials" Then a list of other choices are now possibly available.
Seeing that I haven't been decisive until this point in my life of what I wanted, I decided to first put all my eggs in one basket and focus on one skill, which is web design or Front End Web Development. I will focus on this skill for at least one year and give everything I have into developing it. What this means is that from everything I do from reading books, writing blogs, tutorials, building websites, to watching youtube videos; it will all have something to do with web development.However, I do listen to music while I'm working on this skill but the majority of my time is focused on developing this skill in all scopes of my life.Just to immerse myself even more into the field I decided to cut back or cut off entirely, for a period of time– or who knows what this will develop into, TV, movies, and even hanging out. If I have free time I would like to spend it learning this skill and ultimately make a career change and a new life for myself.I feel like for too long I have been looking to find some sort of purpose with my life and work but never took the time to devote myself to one thing I wanted or decided to do.Therefore I will take this time and be known as a web developer. Until I master this skill and am able to deviate and grow from it I won't try to learn anything apart from Web Development, specifically front end.Beginning this type of radical focus has me even thinking and dreaming bigger. I feel since I have this focus I can now see where what type of life I would like and to support myself financially. Doing this helps in me actually creating my own choices rather than accepting the basic choices presented.For sometime I felt like was not able to support myself, like living on my own, but relying on others like a roommate in order to pay bills. But with this focus I will be able to, in the near future, have the choice of how I want to live and not relying on others but "choosing" whether I want to or not... I don't lol.So that's it. Thats my decision for the year 2018. Choose to focus on this one skill and learn how to market this skill so I can change my environment to line up to the reflection I have of myself.
