How I made my life better

Below is the full transcript. There might be some typos it was auto generated and then checked by me.

[00:00:00] Hey, y’all so welcome to another vlog of mine. Um, today we’re going to do a lot talking head number one, right? Happy pride month. Yay. Rainbows also gay gayness, queerness, LGBT. If you’re part of that LGBTQIA plus all the letters, then like happy you month and make sure you keep we keep everyone accountable past this month, just because it’s one month.

[00:00:29] It doesn’t mean that’s the only month we get to be proud and we get to be who we are, it’s all the time. Um, but besides that again, I just wanted to sit down and chat, talk about like bettering ourselves, whether it’s like in life and in, um, in life, like how, how do you get yourself better? How do you, or even just like, You know, development wise, like how do you actually keep learning?

[00:00:56] How do you keep making yourself better in that respect, [00:01:00] whether it’s career or side projects, how do you just keep making that the best you can be? So how do you keep yourself, like the best you can be? And then also, I don’t know, like, we’ll just keep talking rattling on about like, how to do that. Um, So the first thing is how do you make yourself better in life?

[00:01:18] Having I say first thing, like I have this plan, I don’t, I just knew I wanted to talk about how to learn better. And I was like, you know, learning better. Sounds great. But also Like not just learning better, but also being a better person is something else that’s really good. So like how do you be a better person?

[00:01:35] Well, being a better person goes in a couple of ways. Number one, like accepting you for you. Like don’t ever apologize for who you are. Um, you’re going to be who you are because you’re awesome. Like basically it’s just that you are you, and as long as you are able, and you are being you and you are being accepted by people.

[00:01:57] And that’s great. If you’re around people who aren’t being accepted, [00:02:00] accepting, then maybe it’s time to evaluate new people. Um, that was a lesson that I slightly had to learn on, like trying to find myself, trying to figure myself out. Is you can’t make everyone happy. You just got to do what’s best for you from time to time.

[00:02:16] And eventually you’ll just, you’ll get there. You will, you will be the better.

[00:02:28] So not only that, all that I think you actually did hear a catalyst.

[00:02:36] I don’t know. These cats are going to keep me on my toes. There were no cats. I’m going to keep me on my tips. So on top of being a better you, another thing that I found really useful for me was experimenting with different types of fidget toys. So right now I have this fidget cube here. I’m going to adjust the light live [00:03:00] here.

[00:03:01] I have this fidget cube, spinner, switches, buttons, all that jazz. I mean, I found that it actually helps me focus a lot in me. And I wouldn’t have found this without the pandemic, but like doing this, actually having this in my hand helps me focus meetings or else I’m like fiddling with my outlook. I read emails that are coming through teens messages while I’m on meetings or I’m supposed to be paying attention.

[00:03:28] So this actually helps me pay attention a bit and like, you know, fiddle with the switch. You’d probably hear it, click fiddle with the switch and it helps me pay attention. Um, so that’s just not like being a better you, it’s just helping you figure yourself. Um, I mean, if you’re having issues, paying attention or like focusing, like something like this would probably help.

[00:03:48] I like to better myself by getting into hobbies. I will call that a betterment. So this whole YouTube channel thing is a huge, huge hobby of mine. And same with the streaming. Like you can find me on [00:04:00] Twitch, um, put shot TB slash Megan Wilson underscore. Um, where I work on my code things. And sometimes I play Pokemon.

[00:04:07] I’m only just working on my code things, but, you know, sometimes I like to play Pokemon. I always play other games as well. Um, but all that, our hobbies and trying to figure out a better work-life balance where I get to do everything like that is amazing. And it has done wonders for my mental health. Like I’ve learned, I’ve just learned a lot about myself during this pandemic.

[00:04:30] Um, there was a time at the beginning. Like I was furloughed. I was put on like 10 hours a week of work, which was great. It was fine. I mean, it wasn’t great. It wasn’t fine. Like it cut down the paycheck. Obviously it was a little bit of hurt, but like I get to do a lot more. So like I got to figure out like the streaming setup stuff.

[00:04:50] I got to focus on dub, dub DC for the first time. Like actually sit down and focus and not just the day I had that had to that. [00:05:00] And it was just really nice to be able to sit down and focus on what I really enjoyed doing. So that’s what like led me into like, Hey, I want to make this more of a priority. So then when this year came back around and we’re back at work a hundred percent, I asked off for the week of WWDC because I was able to dive in because I realized what I really enjoyed and like I had the hours.

[00:05:22] So why not take that time to actually sit and really enjoy. Um, so figuring, you’re figuring out your hobbies, figuring out how you make that work-life balance work. It just so happens. My hobbies are also like this development, stuff like that. Um, and not really, they don’t intertwine yet with the day job, so it’s not really like I’m overlapping work priorities.

[00:05:47] Um, now let’s talk a little bit, I guess, that transitions into a little bit of like, how am I like. Or how do, how do I like to, how do I like to learn? Cause I mean, [00:06:00] I just said Dub Dub DC, worldwide developer conference from apple introduces new API , SDKs, all that fun stuff. Xcode yeah. All of those things.

[00:06:14] And now that I brought this over here, I can’t stop playing with it and it’s great. Um, so like it introduced all that. And like, how do you learn all those things? How do you start learning everything basically? Well, the key thing is you don’t learn everything you have to prioritize. So if you’re just starting out, like you’re brand new to development, you don’t know where to begin.

[00:06:37] I highly, and you’re wanting to do iOS. There’s a couple of different websites I’d recommend. Um, okay. There’s one website I really recommend and that’s hacking with swift. Okay. And hacking with swift.com is, has a hundred days of swift and or swift UI. And you can pick which one you want to follow. The first 15 days, ish are the same in both just because it’s going over the swift [00:07:00] basics.

[00:07:00] So make sure link down in the description of her hacking with swift.com. Paul Hudson is a godsend to be able to keep learning. I love his articles. I love the program. I went through like 20 or 30 ish days of the a hundred days of swift UI before I felt comfortable enough to like go in and venture on my own.

[00:07:22] Um, so website or one way to keep warming like that. Um, web development free code camp always comes to mind. I loved three code camp. I actually did a lot of that as well. Um, whenever I was starting to learn the web web side of things. Um, whenever, whenever you’re kind of done with like those walkthroughs and those tutorials, I highly recommend turning to YouTube if you’re hitting a specific problem.

[00:07:46] Um, the reason why I say turn to YouTube, I just, this past week I was having a huge issue in, a react app that I was building where breadcrumbs wasn’t working correctly. Like it wasn’t linking correctly. And I didn’t know how to sync it with react [00:08:00] router, which I needed to do. It turns out there is a very specific YouTube video on this exact issue.

[00:08:07] I just went to YouTube. I typed in Material-UI react, router breadcrumbs, and I got this awesome video about it. Um, and it was great. It walks me through exactly. I walked through his examples and I got it working in no time. Like it was, and it taught me something, it taught me. I needed to keep, I taught me how to do it, which was great and taught me the best practices, stuff like that.

[00:08:28] So if you need to learn best practices, always look towards examples and always keep digging, just cause we find the first example. Doesn’t mean that’s the best example. I probably google-ed for like an hour before I went to YouTube to see if there was any. And I just, I couldn’t find anything in stack overflow that really helps me or on Google for any articles.

[00:08:48] And it wasn’t till I turned to YouTube, but I found it. So the first answer might not be the best answer, but you can always keep looking now on top of that, the next thing is, um, so YouTube is great [00:09:00] blog posts. I always recommend re I always recommend blog posts. I like blog posts the most. Um, the reason why I like blog posts the most is because blog posts are really easy to skim.

[00:09:11] And if the author does a really good job with them, then they would have put in bullet points and step numbers and you should be able to follow through and be able to skim to the next step. And like, if it’s logically put together, of course not everyone does that, but it is better than nothing at least.

[00:09:32] Um, so the next thing, like, I mean, posts, reading, stuff like that. And on the same page of reading, I actually turned to books a lot. Um, so like I’m reading and talking with slips still, but I’m still reading the hacking with swift UI. The hacking was swift, uh, unit testing book, and that has been super duper useful, like learning how to use it, write unit tests.

[00:09:52] And you didn’t think you needed unit tests, then you are wrong. Purely because they will help you catch errors as soon as you throw [00:10:00] them in. So if you do something that you’re not expecting, then that’s where the unit test comes in. Um, it’s really useful. I need to start learning something I’m good at to start learning how to do.

[00:10:08] It’s actually the unit tests and react as well. Um, I’ve noticed that, I making a lot of changes it breaks just a little bit and be great to like guard against that. And like once the change breaks then, um, then I can make that change again as well. Um, but yeah, so that’s really how I like to learn, um, how I like to learn how to better myself.

[00:10:29] Like I said, bettering myself is mainly like, I like to think through every, so whenever I talk about bettering myself, Figuring out the work-life balance, making sure that I’m getting what I need outside of work. So making sure I have time for the hobbies, make sure I have time with the family. Make sure I have time to play with the dogs, which are here.

[00:10:51] We have a Cory down there and to dauchshund mix over here behind me, the cats, all that kind of jazz. Like you. [00:11:00] If you take anything away from this, it’s going to actually be making sure you’re not just spending a hundred percent of your time on work. I mean, of course, if you enjoy it, that’s a little bit different, I guess.

[00:11:14] But like there are things outside of work and it took me a really long time to realize that I’ve been in my current position for five years. And I’d say up until the pandemic, I was pretty much. Really focused on work, where I would drop basically anything I needed to do to make sure work was taken care of.

[00:11:35] And at this point I realized, you know, the pandemic taught me a lot and it taught me, Hey, you don’t need to always focus that much time on work. You could do. Just do your time. Get in, get . Out. If you have something that goes over, create like you can possibly work on it, but you know what it’s going to be.

[00:11:54] Okay. Of course that’s a little bit different. If you’re like a doctor, if you’re actually saving lives, I’m [00:12:00] helping people fix their lights for shows. And if I get an after hours call because I get, because that’s part of my job, of course I take the after hours call, but if I’m not on Afro. It’s not going to happen.

[00:12:11] Like we have emergency support. It’s taken me a long time to get to that point where I am comfortable saying, no, let’s shut down. Let’s actually not work out of work hours unless, unless I’m scheduled to all. Um, but yeah, so that was the, that was my blog. I don’t really know that that didn’t even like follow through.

[00:12:38] I don’t know. And, but again, have you pride if you are having issues or not issues again, happy pride. Y’all go enjoy the brunch. Um, I know that vaccines are rolling out slowly, so, you know, take precautions as you need to go enjoy the brunch. Go enjoy being [00:13:00] gay, especially this month. I mean, it’s pride month.

[00:13:03] Rainbow capitalism has at its best, um, you know, When every company changes their profile picture to you gay, but doesn’t really care. Yeah. It’s that month, but you know, what’s great is you can get all the rainbow things and, um, no that your Val, especially for this month, I mean, all the time, you’re always valid.

[00:13:23] Feel free. Re you can reach out to me on Twitter @maeganwilson_ , like I said, you can follow me on Twitch. Same thing, maeganwilson_

[00:13:28] . Um, you can reach out on YouTube on Instagram mwilson_codes, and I will catch you all next time. Bye.