My journey as a self-taught front-end developer started in 2020. The year 2020 was a strange year for me and it was not due to Covid. In the last two years, I traveled a lot, especially to my home country, and I also started and closed a business. So, when I came back to the States in 2020, I was kind of lost and broke! I did not want to go back to my old life, working 9-5. I wanted more flexibility with my life, especially with my time and location.
I did not know how to do that, and I was not ready to start another business yet. So, I got an overnight shift to pay the bills and gather myself. Then Covid hit the United States, and almost everything was closed. Unfortunately for me, I was an essential worker, so I did not get to work from home. However, since my job was overnight, I had a lot of free time. So I was browsing social media a lot, particularly Twitter when I saw people discussing coding, tech, indie hackers, remote work, and startups. I was immediately drawn to these topics so I started exploring them more. I decided I needed to learn how to code so that I might have more flexibility with my time and location. And the best part of learning to code was that you could teach yourself how to code and not even go to school!
So I bought my laptop with me to work, and I searched for free resources to learn to code. I stumbled upon FreeCodeCamp and am glad I found this gem of a website. So, I started learning about HTML and it was okay. This built my confidence and I felt I could do this. Then I started learning about CSS, and It was not easy for me. So I spent more time learning and building projects with CSS. I was getting better when I decided to travel again(what was I thinking ☹️)and that stopped my learning progress. However, it was nice not being on a lockdown.
I enjoyed my traveling then I came back to the States in the summer of 2021. I had to start over with my learning to code as I forgot what I have learned before. So I went back to freeCodeCamp and started building projects again. This time, I decided to not work and just completely focus on learning to code for six months and then apply for jobs. This was in November 2021, so I gave myself until May as the deadline and then to apply for jobs. I treated learning to code as a job, and I spent more than 8 hours a day coding. This was not bad as I actually liked coding and coffee helped too. So around February 2022, I felt comfortable with HTML & CSS, so I wanted to practice them in real projects. I started looking for internships, even unpaid ones as I just wanted to get some sort of experience. Luckily I got a paid apprenticeship with a Fortune 500 company, that allowed me to work from home. I have no idea how I got this apprenticeship but I am very grateful for it. Currently, I am doing my paid apprenticeship from home, learning JavaScript, and still practicing CSS.