Formation Week 24 and Tech Journey

Hello world! Sorry I have been away from blogging, but I've been really busy to start the new year, with a lot more family stuff than usual. I've been dedicated so much of my life to this transition in tech since last October, that I haven't been able to really see any of my family. I made some time for them, but I have to stay focused. My best friend's little brother Aaron wants to take me to Los Angeles in a week or two, he plays for the Rams, I want to go really bad, but I probably can't, due to all my committments with work and school. He plays for the LA Rams (NFL team), and I would love to fly private and visit his home and the stadium. Maybe another day, I think I still have one more season left before he retires. It's been a long 9 years of watching him grow in the NFL as a man, father, and a player. Aaron is such an influencce to me and his older brother Archie, we grew up from 5 years old to today (34 years old). I am studying Stacks and Queues with Formation this week. I actually started it last week, and it's been going pretty smooth. Some of the problems are pretty complex, but I am grasping the concept. A stack is the idea of LIFO - Last in First Out, in our data structure. A Queue has the idea of FIFO - First in First Out in our data structure, this really hits home for me, because of the years of cooking, you learn about FIFO/LIFO with food items, it's important that you use the old food first and the new food last. I've been teaching all the younger chefs this for the past 10+ years. Speaking of cooking, I am so over it, and tired of cooking, I want a job in tech so bad. I just do not enjoy cooking in a restaurant anymore. Yesterday, I had a 1 on 1 session with a fellow at Formation named Michael. He honestly was the best person I've worked with in a 1 on 1 so far at Formation. Working with him was really fun, he was a really smart guy, trying to understand certain concepts and why things are the way they are. He had some of the same questions that I also had about particular code, but he also had a really good sense of humor and he made it easy to work through tough challenges that we did not understand. He also said he could help me get a job with Accenture, a company he works for, so I am looking forward to maybe trying my shot with that. He is now about of our #Nerds group channel on MatterMost that I created. It's a small nerdy channel, where I invite all the members, whom I feel are a good fit to study with throughout our fellowship program. After I write this blog, I will work on a problem on LeetCode called Min Stack. Not really doing too much today, I will do these last two cards on Formation, and then I will relax most of the day with the family. My fiancee bought a computer science book that she is reading, I thought that was so amazing, because I've been trying to get her to read books for the longest. Her drive to be a Software Engineering is really inspiring. At first, she hated computers, she thought coding was too difficult, but she's grown so much, and she's almost addicted, I can say. It's important, to take breaks, get out and see some light, get some green. That's more important for me than coding all day, because your creativity and thinking is a lot more productive when you exercise and do other things outside of your work. A lot of new programmers do not understand this, as they try to cram everything in and understand everything with out stopping, I think that makes a person less productive. We are almos almost finished with the program and our job hunt is soon to begin. I will be out of food and in tech by the end of this year, that's my goal, and I am going to accomplish it!Picture of Aaron Donald