My Coding journey has been a rollercoaster, I must say. I've always had interest in Tech, but have been clueless as to what to venture into.

Data science was the first path that piqued my interest. For some reason, I lost interest, perhaps for lack of resources or information on how to begin. In May 2020, I stumbled across a junior medical doctor in Australia, who was learning to code, and taught doctors to code too. He use his knowledge to provide solutions to health care related problems around him. I was awestruck! I wanted to know more. I guess this was because I could relate to him personally..... being young and a medic. I genuinely became interested and started to gather resources.

While learning to code, I honestly didn't mind the hours I spent, or the frustrating times I got stuck. I just learned. What seemed overwhelming to me though, was the various paths and abundant resources on the internet.

However, this new found love came to a stop abruptly. I'd had a traumatic experience that affected my mental health. The trauma hit me so hard that I couldn't even do basic things for myself for many months. The pandemic didn't make things any easier.

With therapy sessions, I got somewhat better. However, the thought of going back to code scared me. I had many questions. Would I enjoy it? Would it still look interesting?

Armed with coping mechanisms I had learned in therapy, and some encouraging stories from young developers, I slowly resumed.

Of course, I had forgotten so much. At first, I began by watching very short videos that gave a summary of HTML and CSS. Afterwards, I took a short course in Git and GitHub. Honestly, i regret learning the latter later than I began. I'd recommend going to The Odin Project website, if you want to begin programming, before going ahead with the courses in freecodecamp.

In addition, I joined two communities, because that was what I had mental space for......She Codes Africa and Google Developer Community. Gradually, I started building projects.

I still worry about many things I still have to learn, or other "lucrative" programming paths to follow. But I'm careful not to get so overwhelmed and learning to take breaks often and care for my self.

It's still not perfect. But Slowly. Gently.