but what went wrong?

Starting off this post, I began to give an elaborate background story of my history and where I was before i got to where i'm at now but then I thought to myself "Why am i not getting straight to the point?" So to get everyone up to speed. October 21, 2019, I made the decision for myself that I wanted to get into networking. At first I was going to start to study for my CompTIA Network + but a few people told me to skip the Network + and just go for CCNA. I remember thinking can i really do it? So starting that day, i got all the studying material that i thought I would need to pass ICND1 and ICND2 which as many may know was ending after February 22 2020! Well after a couple failed attempts (and one mistake of confusing the test date on my part, I passed ICND1 with 3 weeks left to get ICND2. From there on, it consisted with 6-8 hours of studying a day. Then on the last day that i was able to take the ICND2 -- i passed!!

That sure was a confidence booster! I had all these ideas in my head on what my next steps were for my career and what i needed to do to get into my next role. So why am I asking the question "What went wrong?". I know this might not be the right question to ask myself but it's something that i thought of A LOT and it's something that I need to be honest with myself. After the certification, i told myself i was going to continue to study the material and go over the material i may have missed on the exam and slowly get myself out there. But here I am 2.5 years later, still in the same role I've been in. Well I've gotten promoted to level 3 but that's besides the point. I didn't continue studying the material and I didn't put myself out there.

Reflecting from when i passed the exam up until now i think there were a few things that happened.

1. I became too comfortable in my current role

2. I became afraid of failure

3. I let go of that confidence I had in myself

So now what? What's the point of this post? So one thing to note is that during my time of studying I didn't have any study-buddy. I was completely alone in going through all the material. I actually ended up disabling my social media accounts to help me stop procrastinating for this exam. After i realized that I didn't want to do this alone, I started to join other Social media sites, such as Twitter and a little bit of discord (I pop in and out a few times on there) but I started to slowly see others who struggled but succeeded. I questioned myself at one-point if this was something I wanted to really do? But after seeing all these people wanting to succeed and go after the same goals. I believe that it gave me that tiny spark that I needed to help me get back on track. But what really did it was my boss telling me that he see's that i lack self-confidence in myself and if i continue on that trail i won't get far. Let me tell you, trying to hold back the water works from your boss is one hard thing to do. After that conversation was a quick trip to the bathroom to cry in the stall for 10 minutes. After that conversation, things slowly started to change. I've started to slowly work on projects at my site with our network engineers and just get as much exposure as I can.

Now to the point of this blog - I know there are tons of others out there going through similar situations as I did and I want to let you all know you're not alone! One thing I want to do is help hold myself accountable with things I want to learn/do

With this "blog" I want to document the re-journey I am going through. Also to add a few posts that maybe beneficial for others on what i've learned so far, tips and trick!

I know this post may seem all over the place but I'm pretty excited to see where this leads me! I'm excited for what the future holds!