[quote=”sabweld, post:331, topic:27179”] I copied to send to my son… [/quote] :sob: :sob: :sob: Give me this feedback, super curious as to his reactionary thoughts…

And also funny you should mention that, Sabrina, I ran into the very same dilemma just yesterday…

Day 67: Garbage

So my cousin who I will name Aezor has a son named Cezar. Aezor is considered the black sheep of the family because time and time again she is warned against making terrible decisions, and time and time again she thinks she is above wisdom and makes those terrible decisions regardless. Fast-forward to the present, and Aezor is now a single mother raising 4 kids from 2 different fathers and is now dating a less-than-reputable man who is probably part of some illegal human transportation operations… but this post is not about Aezor, this post is about Cezar.

Cezar is a strange little man. He is quite frankly the shortest 5th grader I have ever met, maybe because he just doesn’t like eating? Like many boys his age, his only interest is playing the hottest new videogames (@natashakuhn geniously calls this out as having your personality marketed to you) , and gets immensely frustrated when he can’t do so because, you know, his own source of income is from a single mother raising 4 kids. Cezar also finds himself at my (his aunt’s and uncle’s) house quite often. He stays over for weeks at a time, and when I try to be upfront asking why, he claims that he can’t stand being at home. His older sister berates him everyday and his younger siblings harass him to no end. So he comes here, a place where no one will bother him. But I find that hard to believe, because he was talking to my sister the other day and claimed that no one cared about him and it sucked. But… you said you wanted to be alone :thinking:. It got me thinking, what is the truth he doesn’t realize yet?

Double-fast-forward to last night after I come back from an evening of hanging out with friends (yes I’m not following social distancing protocols :upside_down_face: :upside_down_face: :upside_down_face:), and I see him playing on my family’s old junker computer from the 2000s. It is slow and riddled with viruses, but he plays on it regardless because it is the only thing he has access to in this house. Whenever I ask him about his day, he tells about all the time he spent playing this garbage game to get garbage enhancements against garbage players on this garbage computer (he actually structured his sentence like this, I was in complete shock). I smiled and nodded as if I were in complete agreement with him, because Cezar tends to lock up whenever he feels like he’s about to get chastised. I then ask him a question I would have never thought up before this workshop:

What would you rather be doing?

Most things people say to Cezar just go in one ear and out the other, a virtue kids his age typically embody. But this question completely caught him off-guard: I could tell only because he spent a moment pondering and gave what I sensed to be an unsatisfactory answer: I think… I would rather be playing [Popular Game 1] and [Popular Game 2]. I thanked him for the info and decided to retire to bed because it was late. But it got me thinking… what a waste of a childhood for him. It feels like he’s waiting for something to happen, something to give him purpose and meaning to strive towards…

Wait a minute, I think I wrote something like this earlier in the workshop… :thinking: https://pro2.akimbo.com/t/waiting-for-change/33061

I touched on this earlier in my last daily, but the reason I wanted to strive towards affordable computing for all is to coincide with my dream of creating a local software development academy in my hometown. Software development is one of the rare careers that you DON’T need an extensive amount of startup capital to invest and grow you proficiency in: all you need is a half-decent laptop and half-decent internet. With the rise of cloud computing proliferating the market, your limit to influence others can be theoretically infinite. So what’s stopping me?

Like many others at the beginning of the workshop, I kind of felt like I “needed permission” to start this journey. Like I needed to test the waters with a rigorous syllabus for an 8-week course producing tangible results that can be marketed to employers… other buzzwords bla bla bla. But shoud I teach a new generation of upcoming software developers, I no longer want them to be hacks working for others. I want them to become professionals who work on their own accord. So I’m going to give myself a little bit of leeway here… and just start with giving out what I already know, completely disorganized but readily available. Cezar has already shown interest in wanting to develop in the space and he has the rare commodity of an abundance of disposable time, but since I have yet to give him direction, he sits there restless, wasting his time playing games he could not care less about.

I want to start today, but I’m already so overwhelmed with my own shenanigans. And I’m always behind. And though I love to help others, I get frustrated when I can’t accomplish my own goals. I think I know where I have to do some fine-tuning with my time management. I just don’t know how to break it to my own online videogame buddies :upside_down_face:.

@sabweld @michellebasey @athenakatsaros @eliturner @sydneydobersteinlarock @ParisaR
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