Today is a day where I feel like I worked hard spinning my wheels and not moving forward.

This is getting hard.

I know that I am a smart person. At least, that is what I have been told since I can remember. But for some reason, the code isn’t sinking in like I want it too. And I am so frustrated. Not about it being hard, more so about not seeing the progress. In my head, I can see that it shouldn’t be that hard, but yet and still…

It is getting hard.

So what to do? I really, don’t know the answer. I just keep trying to learn new ways to learn. I start my scripts over and over again. I know that I am almost there but something isn’t quite right, and I can’t wrap my head around why not. I am hoping that I will see the other side of this soon. Cause I definitely want to get there.

I keep thinking about why I am here. How much I have wanted to be here. I know that these moments...

The last few days in class I have noticed that I have been observing a 70/30 rule.

I know about 70 percent of what is going on, and 30 percent is mashing up my brains, and kicking them on the ground. Its amazing how much that 30 percent is standing between me and code that works.

I know that this code school is intense and not meant to be easy, but I want to feel like I know what I am doing already. And I don’t really feel like that. At least not yet.

When I take a step back, I realize that 2 weeks ago, I could barely write:

def message
/> puts “Hello World”
/>end
/>message

So where I am right now is definitely an improvement. But tonight I have been racking my brain to figure out this blackjack game in ruby (I have started over yet again), and I am frustrated.

When is this 70/30 rule going to tip more towards 80/20 or 90/10? I don’t dare ask for 100, that may be...

My Yoga Teacher Trainer asked us to write an essay about what our highest aim is. And I have been giving this some thought, because normally I have a passionate and detailed answer. But this time around, I realized that it is very hard for me to articulate exactly what it is that I am aiming for.

I have had so many battles over the last 15 years regarding what it is that I am going to be.

Since being quite young, I have always wanted to be a surgeon. I have been interested in human anatomy before I was in kindergarden, taking my grandmothers art and anatomy books and tracing the pictures. I was fascinated by all the systems that made the body work. So naturally, in high school I took upper level science courses, and declared pre-med track in college. But college threw me for a loop.

My grandmother was diagnosed with cancer months before I left, and my mother quit working to take...

After my first day of Yoga Teacher Training, I realized that this was the first time that I did something strenuous and hard–and didn’t push myself at the same time.

Let me explain.

I am a hard worker. A go getter, a super planner, and a slightly (ok…maybe moderately) obsessive compulsive geeky girl. I push hard for everything. EVERYTHING! But—this is different.

First off,
I never expected to be here.

This came about sort of by happenstance. As in, I just happened to suddenly quit my job (cause I couldn’t take it anymore) and that happened to lead me down a quest to understand what I really want. And to think about what I want to do with my life. That happened to see me applying for a yoga training scholarship, figuring that it may help me:

1. get some much needed exercise
2. help me deal with stress

Then I happened to get said scholarship, which landed me in an intensive yoga...

Today I didn’t go to Yoga, I slept instead.

And technically…that counts as Yoga because I listened to my body when it said, “You can take me there if you want to, but you are going to regret it later”. This, for me is growth. I have always listened to my judgmental brain over my body.

I have long ago given up the idea that I could have that true, work-life balance. You know, the one where you can have it all, everyday, and still take fabulous vacations. I have always been a bit too obsessive (in both good and bad ways), to get that kind of balance.

Although I may not expect to always have that balance, I am noticing that it is becoming imperative that I do create balance just to be successful. Like sleep for instance. This is something that my body craved in large doses this weekend. The same weekend where I had planned to code so hard saturday, and do my downward facing dog...

Today all I wanted to do was get in some coding. It is my first weekend after starting at The Iron Yard, and I need to practice, practice, practice.

But, it seemed that today was not going to be a day for code. Not even the fact that I had already made plans to go to a girls coding meet up was enough to get me there. Everything came up today. And by everything, I mean family stuff.

So what is a beginning programer to do? My answer today, was beats by Dre.

In all the hustle and bustle of my day, I did get the chance to make it over to Best Buy to get some new headphones. I have been wanting an excuse to get some of these, and coding for hours at a time seems to be just the right reason.

So I am back to if I build it, or in this case, if I buy it, the coding will come. I am still trying to get used to my hectic schedule. And between the brain break yesterday, and the physical...

Today I felt what it is like to hit “the wall”. But for me it felt more like my brain just locking up and breaking.

Kind of like a car engine that never gets Chevron with Techron. My brain has been grinding and grinding, with the oil slowly seeping away until finally today….it ground down to a halt, and just broke. I’m not kidding, I was barely able to complete sentences today in class. It was that serious. Once we got to making an array of arrays…I was done.

And it didn’t stop there. When I went to yoga afterwards, for yoga teacher training (yes, I am currently also in yoga teacher training, but that is for another blog post), I could barely do anything there either. In the middle of class, I took child’s pose. for about 15 mins. And for the non-yogis out there, that means basically curling up like a ball on your mat, face down.

Actually that describes it better than a brain...

Everyday in class I feel a little bit smarter, and a little bit stupider at the same time. So as a rescue for my ruby abilities, I decided to look into ways to get involved with Ruby in Houston

So far, I found a couple of meet ups (that I have already joined). These are:

The Ruby Brigade
http://www.meetup.com/HoustonRuby/

Girls Coding Club
http://www.meetup.com/Girls-Coding-Club/

I feel that if I build it, and research it, and meet up about it. Then the Ruby magic will come. And one of the main reasons that I started this was to be a coding ninja, but I will take being a Ruby magician as well.

Speaking of magic….we started learning about defining methods today. And at first I felt stupid, but now I think that I am actually starting to get it. i am hoping that sometime soon, all that SQL knowledge that I have will come in on a white horse and say “Here I am to save the day”.

...

So today I learned an important new thing about Ruby

MINSWAN

(Matz is nice so we are nice)

Matz, or Yukihiro Matsumoto is the creator of Ruby. According to “Legend” Ruby was created to bring joy to programmers. The acronym above is like a mantra in honor of him, and followed by Rubyist around the world.

So from what I hear, Rubyist are generally pretty happy and not so elitist. I have been looking to get involved in the Ruby community, and looking forward to meeting more nice people. As someone new to Ruby, I have to say that this is definitely encouraging. And as an Anthropologist, I have to say that this is extremely interesting.

Can you see some Ruby fieldwork in my future?

So…its only day 2, and already I feel a bit in over my head. I know that they said it would happen, but it happened so suddenly that I didn’t realize it was happening until it was already over.

This morning i came in feeling like a A+ student. Right now, i feel like the person that is standing there scratching their head, while everyone else is laughing cause they got the joke. And to be fair, I am not the only one scratching my head, so at least i am not alone in that.

But on the flip side I have been writing some pretty awesome code. Well….not sure how awesome it is, but here is some. This is code that extracts the vowels out of the the phrase listed below:

phrase = “May the force be with you!”

vowels = [“a”,“e”, “i”, “o”, “u”]

result = []

phrase.chars.each do |c|
if vowels.include?©
result << c
end
end
p result

Aint it pretty? At least I think so. Now if...