I woke up at around noon, which is fine since I slept at 4 AM. I had a slow day since I'm on vacation today and trying to take it easy and rest before my flight. The main thing I did today was go on my longest walk yet! I walked all along the canal eastward until it joined with the Spree. Then I took the U Bahn home. That was around 9 miles and 2 hours!
After that, I had the bad feeling I normally have when I do stuff outside and sweat: my face and arms were itchy and I was getting a slight headache. I resisted itching though because I recognized the feeling. I also let myself relax and watch YouTube, but I knew that it was really easy to let the whole day go like that. That's what happened the last time; I had gone to play basketball but it was a bit sunny and I got itchy. Then I just couldn't focus for like 4 hours after. Maybe I should avoid going out during the day for long periods of exercise then.
I took like an hour and a half nap, which was good. Now I've got some cleaning to do and cooking. I didn't do any Germany yet, even though I had wanted to spend all of today on it. That's alright. Take it easy.
The worst part of the day was when I checked Slack; in the morning M needed my help with something minor, but I still had a small anxiety attack and had to spend like 30 minutes checking what was wrong so I wouldn't spiral. On my walk, someone else had a bug with an earlier version of a package I wrote, but a colleague told them it was resolved and to update. That really had me panicking; I was so happy on my walk up until that point, and it all just shattered. Stop thinking of my work as even a tiny part of my identity. I'm so much more than that. It's my first job. I'm learning, and I'm breaking things. It's okay. Even if I get fired. Then after my nap, someone had made an Issue in my package. It's not a big deal, but I spiraled a bit after that too.
Why am I spiraling here? It's a bit hard to remember, and it does seem crazy now. But the thought process went something like: there are mistakes in my code, I'm such a shit programmer compared to everyone else, I make every possible fucking mistake, my mistakes block everyone else, I'm such a drain on them. What do I think about this now that I'm removed from the spiral? Um, it's not wrong....
- There are mistakes in my code, check
- I'm a bad programmer compared to everyone else, check. But I'm also younger and less experienced, so that's expected.
- I make every possible mistake, check. A bit of an exhageration but it does seem this way. Maybe this is good though, testing is really important to me now because I know that every test I write is probably catching a bug or class of bugs I'll actually make
- My mistakes block everyone else, check. This is sometimes true. When merging my queries package into our main pipeline, I broke literally everything for 1 day. No one yelled at me though (but maybe they will if it happens again). So I do have the potential of blocking everyone else, but I think this will be less likely as I don't take on more projects. I've settled in what I'm responsible for now. So am I right to be anxious about this? Not really; we're a small operation and even if I break everything, I'm definitely not negatively impacting the world in a big way. This is a low-impact job.
- I'm such a drain on them, false. I think I'm a net positive. In general, my bar for what sort of work is actually helpful is stupid high. Everyone on our team is a net positive, even if they move really slow. The idea is to reduce the cognitive load on the more important people on the team, and I think I'm doing that for the things I'm responsible for.
This is something I need to keep working on. And I should devote a lot of time to resolving it; feeling inadequate and having too much self-doubt would hinder my career.