Okay, so, “falling back in love,” huh? Sounds cheesy, but it’s actually been a real thing for me lately. Not with a person, mind you, but with… coding. Yeah, I know, nerd alert! But seriously, I was in a major slump. It felt like a chore, you know? Just staring at the screen, forcing myself to type, hating every minute. I was this close to just throwing in the towel and becoming a… I don’t know… a dog walker or something.
How I started fixing it
First, I stopped. Like, completely. I took a whole week off from any personal projects. No coding challenges, no tutorials, nothing. I needed to clear my head. I went for walks, binge-watched some truly terrible reality TV, and just… chilled. It was weird at first, felt like I was missing something, but it was necessary.
Then, I started small. I didn’t jump back into some massive, overwhelming project. Nope. I found this little, almost silly idea for a simple web app – a to-do list, but with a ridiculously over-the-top animation every time you completed a task. Fireworks, confetti, the whole nine yards. It was dumb, but it was fun.
- Step 1: Brainstormed the basic layout. Just boxes and buttons, nothing fancy.
- Step 2: Got the core functionality working. Adding tasks, checking them off. Standard stuff.
- Step 3: This is where the magic happened. I started adding the animations. I spent hours tweaking the timing, finding the perfect sound effects… It was like playing, not working.
And that’s when it clicked. I remembered why I loved coding in the first place. It wasn’t about the grind, the pressure, the endless debugging. It was about creating something, about bringing an idea to life, even if it was a completely useless, over-the-top to-do list app.
I kept going with that momentum. I picked up another small project, something I’d been putting off for ages – a simple script to organize my messy downloads folder. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but it was useful, and it felt good to solve a real, albeit tiny, problem.
Slowly but surely, I felt that spark reignite. I started looking forward to coding again. I was excited to open my laptop and see what I could build. I was even… dare I say it… enjoying debugging! (Okay, maybe not enjoying, but tolerating it with a lot less grumbling.)
So, that’s my “falling back in love” story. It’s not a fairytale, but it’s real. It’s about taking a break, starting small, finding the fun, and remembering why you got into this whole mess in the first place. And hey, if all else fails, there’s always dog walking.
