As in most cultures, during high-school, I was sold onto the path of "chosing one's career", a craft where your passion and attributes intersect in order to generate abundance, to provide for our loved ones and find purpose.

Even writing this now I can say that so much has changed of how I personally relate to this narrative, but cannot diminish that even when it wasn't evident, still I could feel it's calling and presence, as many of the "truths" that are believed somewhere in us, however silly, ungrounded, or naive.

During the COVID pandemic, feeling lost in the soup of existencial dread, I decided to devote myself to learn a craft that would be fun to do, and would place me in better grounds financially, I asked myself where my passion lies, and after a few days of thought, came with three options of what to study:

• Computer science
• Mechanical engineering
• Interior design

None of these came with an idle feeling, I could feel the curiosity in the question of "how would this work?" exposed through the lens of any of these options. Once I began weighting pros and cons, I kept realizing that "I could do anything", and that the possibilities were there for the taking, so I decided to toss a dice and just go find out what's there:

• 1 & 4 - Computer science
• 2 & 5 - Mechanical engineering
• 3 & 6 - Interior design

The dice landed in computer science and I began directing my questions to friends and the internet, a good friend that works as a data engineer (at the time) took some to invite me to his house to learn about Python (the programming language) and data science concepts. At the time I didn't understand much, but it opened the doors to many more questions, so I am grateful.

Slowly, through online communities and outlines for computer science curriculums by universities, I was able to form my own path. If I had a curiosity about how a particular piece in computer science works, I felt confident in searching for answers; but the task in essence was formulating direct questions.

And that process on repeat. It was never "fake it until you make it" but "practice until you can practice more".