The beginning of the story

Hi! I’m konan, you probably know that. Reading @yoimnotkesku blog (go follow him!) I thought to myself I have never told my “story” anywhere. I have a (probably) very different story, whether it’s a good one or not is up to you to decide.

As most of you know, I’m 21 years old and from Brazil. When I was a kid I really wanted to make games. At ~12 I started learning about a bunch of stuff like 3d modelling and designing (shit) characters, but my coding was very basic stuff, using blueprint based programming like you see in unreal engine and game maker. But that started my interest in logic.

After that I did a lot of things that were not really coding related, but work related! I like working or at least I never hated working. So I did little things that would give me money, like helping in dairy products deliver for supermarkets (basically manual work of carrying boxes). That made quite an impact in my life. I got to know people in very different classes. From the lowest to the highest. It created for me a very broad mind that I’m really glad I have.

Actual Coding

At 15 I didn’t really know any actual coding. I did loops and conditionals and whatnot in blueprint but I’ve never seen a single line of code. But then I got an opportunity. A small task of fixing some stuff in a wordpress website. I didn’t have a single clue of how this could be done, but I said I could try. After some searching I found how that could be done and did it. My “work” was praised and I was asked if I could do some other stuff, for money now! So I accepted and continued studying and applying.

This created a fucking flame in my heart, “I want to work with this I want to work with this I WANT TO WORK WITH THIS” it’s all I could think. I always knew that I would end up doing something in the tech industry, but now I had a clear answer and goal. Programming.

After that I would try everything. Like seriously, EVERYTHING. I was just a kid having fun but also a person with a goal and passion. By the time I was 16 I had a very crazy schedule: High school, technical school, wordpress side gig, learning to code by myself and I would still log daily on discord to play games.

Looking back I don’t have a single clue on how I could manage that (probably by not sleeping, which I did a lot). While in this “learning coding” path I tried a lot of different things, including ml/dl stuff! While retracing my steps I found my old notes about it, but, to be honest, a Brazilian course in dl stuff in 2018 can only take you so far, especially if you have a shit PC and too little know-how. In the end I remember liking studying it, but it was a little too theoretical since I couldn’t run most things for testing what I was doing.

Fast-forward to my senior year of high school we got covid and lockdown. I continued doing my thing, but decided that I really wanted to try getting an internship (which I could get through technical school). So after a month or so of trying to be accepted I’ve got myself one, a webdev internship. I learned a lot of stuff about a real swe job and proved myself as a competent worker by locking a job there after my internship ended.

Okay I got to my goal! I’ve done it! 18 years old, self-taught, employed remotely and… and what? I didn’t really knew. I continued working, continued learning etc, but I didn’t really have a goal anymore. I accomplished already. So I just… continued doing what I was doing at random.

Through all these years, I didn’t really have peers. I never discussed code with anyone, and when I did, I was just teaching them. The only place I talked about code on the same level was at work. Everything I’ve learned was always between me and my PC, day in and day out, only grinding with what I had and what I could see.

Only a few months back that I really started to taking more control over this situation. I’ve been trying to think of ways on how to explain this but they all seen like a lie, so I will just say what I felt:

It clicked. I don’t know why, I’m not sure how, but it just clicked. I’m not old, my life did not end. I still can do things, I WANT to do things. From this “click” a couple of things changed.

My way of approaching things changed, I tried more things that I was previously scared about doing it. One of those is actually using Twitter (yeah seriously) and it ended up being an amazing decision. I’ve got to know new people, make connections and learn new perspectives. If you are one of those ppl who interacts with me, you are part of this, seriously you don’t know how you impacted my life in such a good way, I really mean it.

The end…?

Yeah, this is the end of the text… for now, this is my story, my life. I will keep writing until I can’t hold the pen anymore, and that goes for you, my precious reader, as well. Like I said in the beginning, “I have a different story”. I intentionally wrote that way for a reason. Everyone has a different story. Maybe yours is more common, maybe you see this text as a “hero story” because we tend to glorify perspectives when we are missing details. Maybe you see me as a dumb fuck now because of it. The point is that it doesn’t really fucking matter, things will be different for everyone.

The important thing is to keep your pen up and keep writing.

You are the only one that can do that.

As inspired by a music I’ve been hearing a lot recently, for both of us, That’s not the end, is the beginning of the story.

Thanks for reading. See ya.