I need some motivation, encouragement, or just anything to get me going

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I’ve been in a horrible rut. This entire week I’ve been putting off my tickets of getting the job done. Not that there is a hard deadline on these, but eventually if I don’t start churning them out I’ll get chewed out.

My problem is everything in this industry is so daunting to me. I work with VB.NET making custom and ERP software. Only been in the field for 2 years, but I can’t seem to get enough focus to actively do even the simplest of tasks. While Visual Studio isn’t entirely new it’s still surprises me that I don’t know some key components to it. Don’t get me started with SQL Management Studio. It’s of a different world to me. I know SQL, but the Microsoft tool is just chalk full of features that I can’t even wrap my head around it. Like wtf are INSTANCES?!?!

I currently live in the Chicago area and I’m only getting paid 45k. Though it’s not entirely living paycheck to paycheck it certainly almost feels like it. What I want is to get at the very least 60k, but knowing how to put some discipline in my constant learning is the struggle. I browse reddit far too often. I check my phone like crazy. When I get home from an end of a “days” work I do nothing productive (use to go to the gym, read, or even just basic chores which seem to be piling up on me).

Right now I just don’t know how to pick myself up and get better. Maybe programming is not my thing :disappointed:

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so funny…totally agree. The Microsoft stack is a monster - I’ve been in and out of it for years and still haven’t got a clue really. Overtime I get to grips with something it goes and changes! Check out Microsoft Virtual academy. I’ve spent the past week or so finishing courses that I started on ages ago and never get nearly finished. I’ve also went right back to basics with it , for example did the c# for absolute beginners and it really helped. I’ve been so used to getting thrown right in at the deep end with shit I never get time to just look at the language basics. The thing is with these courses though is you need to finish them and work through the exercises. My next move this week is a udemy (?) course for building apps with xamarin, but apart from that I was looking up just basic coding tests I could do to cement the stuff I’ve been doing on the courses. Programming is hard. Yeah it seems like some people are just tuned into it and can fly with it but for the rest of is it is pure hard work. Watched a funny talk through the week with what seems to me to be pretty much a super geek - he joked that in one of his university classes the lecturer had just descended in getting them to chant ‘Public Static Void Main’ so that they class would get one exam question right at least :slight_smile: Serious point was that it is a difficult thing to teach too, and that lots of people who got really into programming got there via playing with stuff, building stuff for fun - there might be a more academic or business approach to it these days that makes it more difficult.

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Just book a few hours at work off as “learning/training” time and learn that way. Make sure your work is getting done but walk through some tutorials or videos and if anyone asks just say “improving skills so that bug that took me 5 days to fix will only take 3 days” :wink:

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