Pangs of guilt

Tomorrow morning, 9am, I start a 12 week intensive course in coding.

Oh my god!

I've just completed a 4 week pretty-intensive pre-course, where weeks 3 and 4 were especially full-on, but the enormity of the upcoming task is only starting to really hit me now, and I've been feeling terribly guilty about it these past few days.

I'm 44, married with three wonderful daughters. They are my life, and everyday there is something amazing about them. I'm with them all most of the time, and there are so many things I'm going to miss. Just simple things like sharing a story with my youngest when she's sleepy in the middle of the afternoon, or picking my 8 yr old up from school and singing Uptown Funk in the car on the way home (I haven't reached the 'embarrassing dad' stage yet so I'm making the most of it), or attending a sports day (which I'm going to miss - ouch), or playing LEGO Star Wars with my eldest on a rainy day. Not doing these little things is going to be the hardest, I think.

Their school holidays are around the corner, and I'm going to miss most of it as I'll be locked away coding. It's obviously my choice, and I really do want to do this. I also want to get the most out of it, but I guess I'm only just starting to feel the weight of the huge sacrifices I always knew were coming. We're going to have to fit a lot of fun into the weekends. I'm going to have to get as much as I can out of the early mornings and 'bedtimes' with them. It's going to be very hard.

On a much less guilty note, but upsetting in a different way, I've also had to hand over the reigns to my other baby. I've been running WarpedFactor for the last 18 months, and as well as being ultra proud of the success the site has had, I've also made some good friends through it. People I talk to most days, but I suspect I won't have time to chat much over the next three months - well at least not about anything but coding! It'll be very strange not having that geek outlet in my life. I guess it's radical changes all round.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has felt like this when starting something as completely insane as learning to become a web developer in just 12 weeks (every time I say it - madness!), and I won't be the last. But in this instance I don't care about anyone else, it's a personal thing and these new-found pangs of guilt just add to the difficulty of the task ahead.

It's an old cliche but the last few days really have been a roller-coaster of emotions. I'm excited. It's scary. I can't wait to get started. What the hell am I doing? This is the greatest thing ever! I feel guilty. All of this, and rinse and repeat. But I'm also quietly confident that I'll come out of it the other side and realise it was absolutely all worth it, and very likely the best thing I've ever undertaken career wise. That is what I have to keep telling myself.

So here we go. Head first into the abyss...