A few months ago, if you had told me I’d be deadlifting 155 lbs, I would have laughed and said, “No way!” But here I am, doing it—something I never thought possible.
In a previous post in my reimagine journey, I talked about reframing milestones to focus on consistency rather than arbitrary goals. At the time, I was working out on my own, trying to stay active with strength training and Zone 2 walks. I was making some progress, but it was small and I felt stuck. Looking back, I realize it wasn’t a lack of effort—it was a lack of structure, consistency, and progression.
Nine months ago, I started the Reimagine Journey to shift my career from engineering leadership to hands-on technology, specifically focusing on my health, personal growth and advanced tech skills. The long extended leave gave me the time and space to reflect on what I truly love and shape the next chapter of my career. It gave me the opportunity to determine how I want to live the rest of my life.
It’s been a while since I last shared an update on my Reimagine journey that started three months ago. Initially, I used to share my progress every week and it helped me build momentum during the early stages. But after some time, this weekly ritual became tedious - sometimes taking up an entire day for a single post. So I decided to share updates based on significant milestones rather than tying them to specific points in time.
Today is a beautiful day, just two more days to end the beautiful year of 2023 - a pivotal year of my career and life.
Reflecting back on the year, I am grateful and happy that I was able to experience the year in good health in the midst of wonderful people - my family, friends, and my team/colleagues at Intuit. Now is the perfect time to say goodbye to the year and share the invaluable lessons I have learned along the way.
Welcome to Week #5 review of my remagine journey. The previous week’s reviews and the full series can be found at new-beginning tag collection.
What I was able to do this week
Yes, it is week #4 of my remagine journey and it’s time for the review. I couldn’t post it last week because of reasons I will explain below. The previous week’s reviews and the full series can be found at new-beginning tag collection.
What I was able to do this week
Ok, here is the honest, bitter, truth - this week (week #4) was super rough for me - in terms of learning and reaching the goals I had set out at the beginning of the week.
This post has been sitting in my draft for two weeks, waiting for my time to polish and post. But then as usual, I never got to it and it just stayed there. Anyway, now I am gonna just publish. So if you see typos or mistakes, please lmk. Progress, not perfection, yeah?
It’s time to review Week #3 of my reimagine journey. The previous week’s reviews and the full series be found at new-beginning tag collection.
OK, here we are at Week #2 of the “new beginning” I set forth mid October - a journey which did not get a specific name, but it doesn’t matter. I guess some things are better served unnamed, yeah? Anyway, let’s jump into the review. As always, this is free flow writing and I will follow the same format as last week’s review.
What I did during the week
An honest review of this week should start by reviewing the goals I set out at the beginning of the week. These are the goals I decided in my last week’s review:
It has been a week since I started my leave of absence to pivot my career to be more hands on in tech. Here is how my Week 1 went. This is mostly a stream of consciousness instead of a well-formatted post, because it was important that I publish it at the end of the week - progress not perfection!
What I did during the week
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started learning two JavaScript courses in parallel - Modern JavaScript by Execute Program and Learn JavaScript by Jad Joubran. Each of these courses have different strengths - one is a typical structured course with a set of chapters each explaining a concept, a lot of examples and exercises, whereas the other one is a set of best practices of writing modern JavaScript. I think it is important to understand both. Also, the Execute Program course follows the spaced repetition format and hence limits the amount of material you can cover everyday.
A few months ago, I stood at the crossroads of my career thinking about my next chapter. I loved my job, my team, and was at the peak of my career as a leader. Yet, I yearned for a return to the world of hands-on development, where I could immerse myself in the flow of code.
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I want to pivot my career towards the goal of coding, learning and building with tech. But I resisted the urge to act on impulse. Instead, I started a deliberate, step-by-step plan to execute this transition. Here’s how I approached it…