I always told my friends that I wished I was more artistic. I wished I had the creative ability to do beautiful things. To dance to a beat or sing without going off-key or out of tune. All through school, I envied other students that were able to match colours together effortlessly, how their drawings always seemed so beautiful and bubbly while my drawings always came out as sharp jagged lines without the elegance or grace that was needed to be considered worthy. But I knew that these things were beyond me.
I had always been more quantitative. Math, chemistry, physics, and biology, these subjects weren’t difficult. They made sense. They were concrete theories that I was able to comprehend, grasp, and apply. While there are theories in art, such as the intricacies of how a brush could move across a page, the layering of colours, and techniques used to create delicate yet bold statements, to me they remained theories and nothing more.
With my background in a range of logical subjects, mastering computer programming became a feat I felt I had a chance at. Computer programming isn’t seen as an art by many people, but to me, web pages are built from raw creativity directly translated from the mind of the computer programmer. An abstract screen of characters mysteriously formulated into an overlapping of colours with strategic button placement and stylized fonts. I thought I found the bridge that would combine my logical mentality and creative desires. Though a brush would never sit comfortably in my hand, the keys of my laptop felt like an extension of me.
However, the mental blockade proved a larger hurdle than I had anticipated. I had come to believe that coding and computer programming were only reserved for those of extreme intelligence, the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. Failure seemed inevitable. There was no way that I would be able to pick up these programming languages, and even if I did, it would take years of struggle.
So, I avoided this dream as it felt so out of reach. It was not until after I graduated from post-secondary that I found myself with an abundance of time on my hands with nothing to do. Having been let go from my part-time job that I excelled at made me feel like a failure. My self-confidence was no more than a hemorrhaging wound. In these feelings of self-pity, I felt I had nothing left to lose, and only prosperity to gain if I inched my toes outside of my creative comfort zone. The inkling of temptation towards coding had begun to creep in and I took full advantage of it. With this newfound motivation, I started to make my way to the coffee shop every weekend.
I started by taking online courses. I watched, paused, and rewatched hours of recorded lectures. I spent hours in the coffee shop with my eyes burrowed into the computer screen, occasionally flickering up as patrons come and go, irritated by my inability to pick up on these concepts that seemed so self-explanatory. Employees would start and end their shifts as my eyebrows were still furrowed and knotted in frustration. Every morning, I would go into the coffee shop determined to make progress and have a breakthrough moment, but every evening, I left defeated by my lack of progress in a skill now marketed to children. This went on for months. Every day, I would return home with the stench of stale coffee clinging to my clothes and hair, knowing that I had spent yet another eight hours devoting myself to a skill where I felt like I was permanently sitting at the starting line.
Approximately six months into this endeavour, I began to accept that I would never understand computer programming despite the methodological reasoning behind it. My best efforts were futile. I was ready to give up, that was until I overheard my coworkers talk about the program that they were creating and that they had run into some errors in the code. The jargon they were using in their conversation no longer seemed foreign to me, in fact, I understood the issue they were having. Though I wasn’t skilled enough to provide a solution to the problem, I felt a sense of accomplishment for simply understanding the conversation. It was at this moment that I realized that my dedication to the craft was starting to bear fruit and the hundreds of hours staring at a computer screen were becoming worthwhile.
I continued learning to code. It’s been a year now and I can proudly say that I have picked up several programming languages and can create websites and programs from a blank screen. Art doesn’t only translate to paintings and drawings but could expand into public speaking, photography, writing, and for me, coding. I would have never anticipated doing this a year ago. If I was able to overcome the hurdles of learning code, why couldn’t I apply it to the arts? I learned my excuses for my inability to create traditional art were mental roadblocks that I had constructed. I am creative and will no longer put myself in a mental box that restricts me from expanding my horizons.
Today, I still sit in the coffee shop for hours at a time, coding, writing, and honing new creative skills. I go home every day, sometimes defeated, sometimes elated, but always with the smell of stale coffee clinging to my clothes and hair.
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