The Great Failure of 2024

This is a submission for the 2025 New Year Writing challenge: Retro’ing and Debugging 2024. The last 10 years of my life have been bookended by failure. In order to accurately recount what my 2024 was like, I need to go back to 2014 first. Just for a minute. In 2014, I experienced my biggest professional failure to date. Everything I had spent years toward fell apart, and I suddenly had no idea what I was going to do with my life. This career failure sent me spiraling in fear. I was terrified of failing again. Over the next several years, this fear of failure manifested as perfectionism. It was perfectionism in the sense that I avoided taking on anything I wasn't certain I'd excel at. Fast forward to 2024. This time last year, I was learning the basics of JavaScript and React. Up until this point, I was having an easy time on my coding journey. I was enjoying building websites with HTML & CSS. I was excited to expand my skills. Can you see where this is going?

Jan 15, 2025 - 22:58

This is a submission for the 2025 New Year Writing challenge: Retro’ing and Debugging 2024.

The last 10 years of my life have been bookended by failure. In order to accurately recount what my 2024 was like, I need to go back to 2014 first. Just for a minute. In 2014, I experienced my biggest professional failure to date. Everything I had spent years toward fell apart, and I suddenly had no idea what I was going to do with my life. This career failure sent me spiraling in fear. I was terrified of failing again. Over the next several years, this fear of failure manifested as perfectionism. It was perfectionism in the sense that I avoided taking on anything I wasn't certain I'd excel at.

Fast forward to 2024.

This time last year, I was learning the basics of JavaScript and React. Up until this point, I was having an easy time on my coding journey. I was enjoying building websites with HTML & CSS. I was excited to expand my skills. Can you see where this is going?