When Learning Strikes a Code

There’s a bundle of things you always wanted to do, but you haven’t. You wanted to learn to sketch when you’re in primary school, but you always felt you’d plenty of time for that later. You wanted to learn to play the guitar in high school, but there was always that one show on TV you couldn’t miss. You wanted to learn photography in college, but you always thought you’d better things to do. And then you started working. You wanted to learn some business tricks and branch out into some side-hustles because you’ve read ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’, if only you knew you’ve never-ending birthday parties and baby showers to attend. Some people manage to find their way out of this tangle and still do everything else you’ve been (and haven’t been) doing, much to your disbelief.

 

In my case, I’m as equally guilted out as you’re. I always wanted to do some interesting stuff to look cool, but I’ve never managed to bring myself any closer. I had my chances. No complaints about that, nor any excuses. And out of nowhere, COVID 19 happened. While it’s been extremely disastrous to the world at large, some people have taken apt advantage of the free time at their disposal. They’ve made tremendous strides in their physical health, while others have also achieved personal milestones in various aspects of their lives. The pandemic hasn’t been too bad, after all; it’s come as a ‘reset’ button to allow ourselves to reconsider the dynamics we’ve been living by. 

 

One of the things I decided to do around this time was reading. I wanted to binge read all those books I’ve missed. In so doing, I stumbled upon some weblogs too, the most notable being Sonam Pelden’s. The piece she wrote titled “Why you should learn how to code” struck a chord (code) with me. I knew this was one thing I always wanted to learn. I’d just read ‘iWoz’ by Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple and Gina Smith, and it only accentuated my interest in coding/programming. I reached out for Code For Bhutan and enquired if they had any coding classes or similar this time around. There was none. So I turned my attention to online courses, and my luck just got better. I found out there were plenty of courses offered at Coursera fully funded by the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources (Bhutan). The first course I’ve enrolled myself in is ‘Web development’, and there are a handful of others on my list such as Python, JavaScript, CSS and HTML, to mention a few.

Welcome Page on Coursera

That’s all I’ve in my plate for now, and I’m looking forward to getting better by day—It’s all about practice, practice, and more practice. So I got to go headlong and grind; a razor can’t be sharpened on a piece of velvet, after all. It’s difficult for me, but I find solace in Woz’s words: one step at a time!

How I discovered my love for writing

The first things first, you need NOT be Stephen King or JK Rowling to get going with writing. It’s not a mere prerogative reserved for the pro writers alone. The truth is everyone writes, just everyone, yes! And interestingly, it’s been indispensably ingrained in us since the time we’re introduced to the alphabets: right from writing text messages on our phones or updating our status or leaving a comment on Facebook or other social networking sites. It’s been very much a part of us all along, you see. 

And it hasn’t been any different for me either. I’m the first generation in my family when it comes to writing as my parents never had any schooling. So writing never came naturally to me as it does to the second or third generation folks and for that matter, even the English natives. 

I think the seed of writing is sown in schools for the first generation lots like me. That’s where we’re first introduced to the art of writing. It’s schools that endow us with the tools for writing, but we never find their exhaustive utility until we become teens and begin to draft the first love letters on our friends’ biddings. I’m glad that I’m a part of the ‘letter’ generation and not ‘later’ generations, for the latter does not write as much at the personal level as the former did. I also wrote volumes of letters to my friends all over, and when I was overexcited, I even wrote pen letters although I’d never received a single reply. I believe it was around this time that my love for writing developed gradually and I’d enjoyed every bit of it. And it also was around this time that I’d occasionally tried writing poems. I was always surrounded by teachers and seniors who wrote at great ease and I look up to them to this day. 

And once I’d started college, I’d always received a lot of encouragement from my tutors. Their positive feedbacks reinforced and concretised my love for writing. So during the college and university days, I also happened to attend language and literature classes including writing (both creative and academic). It’s quite funny that when you learn grammar more and more, your confidence in writing hits the all-time low. I’d struggled to write even a single sentence without being self-conscious thence. I guess this often happens to everyone who comes from the non-native English background. Worse, the academic writing had been quite hard for me. I couldn’t even imagine how the doctorate students managed to write an eighty-thousand-word thesis. But, after my master’s degree, I can breathe a fair bit of confidence now. Things I’d dreaded before seemed manageable when I’d learnt some tricks and hacks from various sources and fetched some pointers from my friends about the trade in hand. 

Long before that, there were platforms like kuzuzangpo.com, Nopkin, and Writers Association of Bhutan where the Bhutanese lots wrote at length. I’d been fascinated by their write-ups and I’d also gone to the extent of signing up there. However, I’d never managed to write anything for want of some nerves. And much later, the era of weblogs dawned. In congruence with the trend, I’d created my first weblog in October 2010 and another one later on blogger. I also created one on wix.com in 2018. None of them exists today, however. Perhaps, I’d never found my niche there or the perseverance to stick there longer. 

I write here in this blog today, but I’m not sure how long I can keep it although I intend to keep it until the end of time. Nevertheless, I’m certain that I’ll take my love for writing to my grave regardless. Besides writing, I’ve also discovered my love for editing (content and copy) and proofreading lately. This is one of the most underrated phases of writing, neglected by many beginner writers. And on hindsight, I’ve also noticed that the importance of reading is also never adequately acknowledged. I feel you can’t become a good writer if you aren’t a reader first. 

If you ask me

This weblog is 

            a ready parchment to my quill 

            a magic paper to my blot of ink 

            a whetstone to my little unused pen 

            a tiny space to the untried writer in me

This weblog is 

            a retreat to my untamed mind 

            a resting place to my racing thoughts 

            a soothing balm to my bruised heart 

            a puff of reinvigorating air to my weary lungs

This weblog is 

            a walk back to my past and a walk forward

            a gesture of forgiveness to my peccadilloes

            a promise of undying love to my late Apa and myself 

            a tinge of nerve to face my triumphs and tribulations

This weblog is 

            a pair of wings to the figments of my imagination

            a lamp to my genie and a genie to my lamp 

            a night bus ride to my Hogwarts reveries 

            a brief rendezvous with the Bard of Avon 

This weblog is 

            a lodestar to my sea of aimlessness 

            a string of laughter to light up my blues 

            a bead of tears to validate my human form

            a junkyard to my…. ah naw, not that 

This weblog is 

            also a reminder of life’s vagaries and vanities 

            its transitoriness and its brevity

            and about all that has and hasn’t been said above