Transitioning into tech while technically transitioning

Hello and welcome to my blog!
I finally managed to write my first post! Yay!

Why a blog?

Well, I’ve been writing since I was an infant. I realised I liked writing when, one day on the third year of high school, my Italian and Latin teacher told me “You seem to have great writing skills. Ever thought about developing them?”.

For context, my high school was, as we say in Italy, a “scientific one”, and my class in particular was doing double the number of hours in Math and Physics compared to the rest of the building. We were all about numbers.
So, when the teacher told me that, it blew my mind.

But, also, opened a door.
Since then, I’ve been writing a lot and in many different formats. Blogging was one of them.
It started with those few seconds of Myspace I lived and it then blossomed around the time I discovered Linux and decided having to reset my laptop while being harassed on tech forums online was a good way of spending my time.

And so I blogged. It was mostly reviews with political/personal commentary on comic books, movies, TV shows, books and videogames. All the same thing I still nerd about and occasionally I also write myself. My blogs had numerous reincarnations. I started with Blogger and then alternated between WordPress and federated micro-blogging platforms or a combination of both.

What is this blog going to be about?

Probably, not the nerd stuff mentioned above. Not mainly at least.
The idea is to keep track and share my journey as I transition into tech. This experience will be influenced by my identities of course.
I’m white, which grants me a huge deal of privilege. But I’m also a career changer, a migrant and, most importantly, I’m a trans person. Which it’s always been a big deal, however, now we’re lucky enough to be a constant trending hashtag in every conversation!
There will be stories about my adventures navigating this new world as well as write-ups on all the fun projects I will work on the side. As a nerd and an open source aficionado, I’m sure there will be plenty.

Sorry, who are you again?

I’ve done and been a lot, but let’s focus on the past five years, when I became a chef and baker with a well-paid position. Bear in mind, I like cooking, I love baking and, if there is one thing I always want to do is eating. But working in hospitality has never been my goal.
Hence, after five years I attempted my first career change. It was March 2020. Guess how it ended?
Three years later, I’m attempting it again, this time with School of Code 42.

Wait, what? But your CV and About talk about School of Code.

Yes, SoC is the 16-week intensive bootcamp I recently completed where I learned a great deal about Software Development and met some amazing people.
However, before that, I applied to 42 and got selected for the Piscine, which I quit after two weeks because it wasn’t my cup of tea. I might write a post about this in the future.

The reason why I’m writing about 42 is that, on the first day of the Piscine, while I was cycling to the building, I passed next to a huge truck:

Since then, I’ve been seeing it as a good omen, a sign that was telling me this was the way, I was making the right choice. Even after I had to quit 42. In fact, I didn’t stop, and that’s how I ended up in School of Code. And that’s how I ended up here.

That sign, that symbol, even though it didn’t have anything to do with being transgender and probably doesn’t even refer about the tech I think of, had to be mentioned in the first post of my blog. I was also thinking about naming the blog after it until I decided I didn’t really want to name the blog.

And, so, here I am. Another transfem in tech. Which, in case you don’t know, it’s kind of a stereotype, at least in the US. And I will be talking about trans stuff along tech and nerd stuff, but I won’t be here educating people. I might be willing to drop a casual link every now and then, that doesn’t mean necessarily I am willing to answer any question.

There is the internet for that. And, if researching is too hard, there is also Perplexity nowadays which compile mini articles with resources you can navigate to learn more. There are endless possibilities to expand your knowledge without bothering anyone. You know, growth mindset and all that.

I think it’s pretty much all for today. It’s already a fairly long and chaotic introduction, so I will…

No, wait, what about the Matrix rain?

I’m glad you asked.
As I’m sure everybody knows already, The Matrix is a trans metaphor.
And if you don’t really remember about it, you can have a quick refresher by reading this article.
Going back to the transfem stereotypes, the Matrix rain is another one. And, even though I will probably remove it and change the style of my website in the future, I thought I should have launched it with this beautiful homage.

And now we can finally call it a day.
Next time, I will tell a more structured and less chaotic story.
Introductions are always the worst.

Peace & Serenity.