Today is the day.

I've officially started my software engineering bootcamp.

And, as I predicted, I'm nervous/excited as all get out.

I was chatting with a classmate earlier today, wondering why this is the case. I mean, I have eight years of post-high school education under my belt. It's not like I haven't done any education since I graduated back in 2007. So maybe it's really just the excitement getting to me, the prospect of a career where I'm not at the whims of a volatile market and buying habits?

However, I think it's more than that. I do think I'm legitimately nervous of what's to come. I'm not some early-20s single who is doing this solely for the paycheck. (Which, hey—if that's you? No shame whatsoever. I get it.) Rather, there's a lot on the line for me. My wife and I decided back in 2016 that it'd be best for our family if she stayed at home with our son, which means I've been the only one bringing in income since then, apart from her taking on a few nannying jobs here and there. And as you may or may not know, the car industry right now is not hot whatsoever. I'm lucky enough to have managers who, when I requested a raise, are willing to give me money out of their own paychecks to help. But that's only happening because despite the market, we have been somewhat profitable as of late. Who knows how much longer that will last?

And, like most people, I was laid off last year in the beginning stages of the pandemic. Unlike a good number of people, though, I wasn't stuck at home during the first few weeks. On March 11th, my daughter was born...only to spend 40 days in the NICU due to life-threatening circumstances. So we spent the majority of our time by her side, and staying at a friend's AirBNB rental down the road from the hospital until she was cleared to come home. By the grace of God, the hospital wrote off our medical bills as an act of charity—bills that would have amounted to seven figures easily—but being laid off and still having bills meant we got pretty heavily into debt. Another inspiration to make this career change.

I hate that money is my biggest inspiration, but it really is. I've heard time and time again, "Money doesn't buy happiness," but when you live in a capitalistic society, it does buy you a lot. Without money, you can't pay rent or a mortgage, you can't support your local church community, you can't eat, you can't invest into your children's future educational and career endeavors... The list goes on and on. It's not like I want to be some fancy entrepreneur with 100,000 followers on a social media platform, desiring to have people hanging on every word I type/say. No, I just want to get to the point where we aren't living paycheck to paycheck, and where I'm not coming home from my job feeling like I accomplished little to nothing because we didn't have a single customer call or stop by.

Now the trick is not getting into my head. It's hard for me not to look ahead in our curriculum and feel overwhelmed by what we'll be creating. Despite my "educational experience," learning in a scaling context like this is new for me. That is, and I may have used that phrase wrong, taking what I learned before and applying it to future concepts and ideas. Being a theology major, there's an element of that present, yes, but it was more abstract and theoretical, whereas software engineering is, clearly, a much different animal.

Still, I have my why. I know this is where I need to be. And I'm not going to let anything stop me from doing what's best for my family.

Here goes nothing.