I write to release what I feel. I write to express who I am. I am writing now because I am disappointed with myself.

Life is never easy. I always strive to find what I really want to do in this life, sometimes I find it, most of the time I don't. Life has a way of teaching me that there's no easy way to reach your dreams. You have to go through the hardest challenges just to get it. Few days ago, I realized I wasn't pushing myself to belong to where I am now. June 1 is my work anniversary. I started working year 2010: almost a month after I graduated, which means I'm working for 3 years already. 3 years and I feel like I still haven't achieved anything. It was proven when I had an interview for a work opportunity last Thursday. To my dismay, I wasn't prepared to that kind of exam... always. I hate proving my skills and experiences on a damn piece of paper. I hate how you'll be hired or not based on that alone sometimes. I always find it hard to code on paper. As a developer, I should know better than that. I should have gone proving my skills for the 3 years I have while working and growing with it; but I didn't. I started coding not because I knew its concepts, but because I had an example. An example that could help me create what I needed to create. In short, I learned coding via copy and paste. A number one rule that shouldn't be mostly done when coding. So yes, I managed to learn along the way, but I never left the shadow of examples. I used to blame the foundation I have, on how I didn't have a good teacher to help me learn what I needed to learn. It was a day of realizations and self-disappointments.

I want to stop being compared to fresh graduates. I want to stop blaming the foundation and the teachers I had because it is my job to read and learn too. I want to stop blaming whoever because of what I didn't learn. It's the kind of push I needed, I am disappointed with myself then because I stayed as a dead fish... I stayed like that on a growing business where I need to always step up, to always learn. It may be hard, but there's no harm in trying. I want to be someone I can be proud of. I want to push myself to be better in my chosen profession. It's frustrating actually, knowing that when I step outside my work, it might eat me alive. I never felt so defeated until that day. It already happened before when I was looking for a new job when the first company I worked with needed to let all its employees go; but for it to happen again? I must hate myself. I wanted to cry real hard so I can regain what I need to and come back to fight again. Being in this industry is a competitive game. You have to cope up with the growing technology so you won't be eaten alive when you get out. It's what I needed to do. This is what I have to do.

It's the push I always needed to have. So much in my safe or comfort zone already, I have to step up my A-game. Ahh. I don't know where to start, but I must start. I might feel like this, but hey... I was told that I'm shortlisted. (well, it came from my friends so  I don't know. haha)

"Fall seven times, but stand up eight."