Boy oh boy, was this a journey! I finally got my first portfolio site deployed and it feels amazing! I really struggled with putting it up, but I learned so much along the way.

I am definitely a perfectionist, and that is not necessarily a good thing. Like, not at all! Perfectionism can lead me to ruminating over the silliest details that feel like the most important thing in the world at the time. In this case, I was worried that the example projects on my portfolio site were too basic to be impressive to a potential employer. So I spent days trying to deploy one of my other projects that is much more impressive. I kept running into error after error and I was getting really frustrated because I wanted to start applying to jobs but I didn't have my portfolio site up yet.

Then I had a conversation with a mentor of mine. He helped me to put things into perspective. He just got 5 offers for his first Software Engineering job. He graduated from the same program that I'm in just 3 months ahead of me. He gave me some insight into what employers are really looking for, and assured me that my personality and work ethic will shine through once I get into interviews with companies. He let me know that, while great to have, an awesome portfolio site is not the only thing that I will need this early in my career, so I should focus on my strengths. I can still work on my portfolio site, but I need to start putting myself out there in the meantime.

That totally changed the way I look at things. I decided that since my site is 90% finished, I will focus on deploying the site as is so I have something to submit with job applications and I don't wait around until my portfolio site is "perfect". He gave me some great resources and the most useful to me so far is Netlify. I was able to deploy my portfolio site (the site you're currently reading!) simply in a matter of minutes; totally relieving me of the stress of not having a site up yet. I can now be on my way to applying for my first Developer job!

All it took was a little reframing and I was able to tell those voices in my head to be quiet and stop obsessing over trying to make everything perfect. I'll definitely carry this lesson with me.