With the installation of vsVim yesterday, today was spent trying to beat my time on the Prime Factors kata using the newly available Vim keybindings. For some reason I thought I’d have an immediate boost in speed, but the opposite turned out to be true. My Vim game needs some work, and luckily I can’t think of a better way to improve than by training for a kata performance. I started the day of at 16min and ended it averaging around 10. That’s with consulting the keyboard periodically and “cheating” every now and again by using the arrow keys in INSERT mode.  This isn’t ideal but as far as starting places go, I think I could be doing worse. I still make a lot of mistakes and I’m thinking I might have to slow things down just a tad to minimize the typos. Unfortunately, this leaves no room for any demonstration of Git workflow. Perhaps once I improve my proficiency in Vim, I’ll do another and include it. Other than that, I’ve been thinking a lot about Vim and have made a couple of changes to my vimrc file after reading this excellent article.

Recently, I feel like I’ve gotten over this invisible wall, and to me, the clearest indication of that is  the simple fact that I’m now reading blog posts, and articles about software development. Let me explain. Even though I’d been working harder than I’ve ever had to work in my life, learning tons, and loving every minute of it, I still hadn’t completely bought into the new direction I was taking my life. It was hard to see then, but looking back, the difference is clear. It’s a grimacing would-be bather, wading tentatively into  the shallows vs. the holler of an ecstatic cannon ball off of  a boat or cliff. One is constantly asking “do I have what it takes to go further?”  and the other one has left the decision to gravity. The fact I’m voluntarily reading more and educating myself about the industry and career I’ve chosen to take part in signifies a really important change in the way I’ve started to approach things, it moves me closer to the ideal of a craftsman and it allows me to let go of this notion that I’m an outsider looking in. The determined wader and jumper will both make it to the ocean one just does it faster and has a lot more fun.