I'm Prepared To Unlock The Door To Another New Room

Before I explain why I chose to embark on this lengthy and productive journey to coding, I have a special poetic piece to share with you!

Learning to code

will help me

unlock multiple doors

to new, enigmatic and foreign realms.

Making digital word puzzles

and match-3 mobile games

is no longer

an unreasonable pursuit.

Now it will be

a dream I’ll actually

be eating, drinking,

and breathing in.

Women who code

will be able

to solve mysteries

that we’re left unsolved.

I’ll be one of these women…..

As I've discussed in multiple Vocal pieces, creative and intellectual activities have been close to my heart since I was a young child. I've done everything from scribbling paint onto coloured construction paper to writing the most complex, mind-boggling poems for people around the world to read! The only time I will leave my creative and intellectual journey is when I die. I want As I’m maturing and exploring more opportunities, I’ll continue to try out Jew activities that I want to enjoy doing at both a leisure and professional level.

My mom was the first one to recommend coding to me. I was only a pre-teen when I successfully created my first flow chart on a computer and my mom's jaw dropped in complete amazement and awe. She couldn't believe that her precious angel was a tech genius who was able to make things that mainly adults would be capable of making on the computer! After gradually noticing my deep-rooted tech abilities during my tween years, she recommended I pursue coding and kept persuading me throughout my high school career. At first, I was reluctant, because I didn't know what I would do with coding. I didn't have any reasons for pursuing it, besides making flow charts. During a trip to England, my aunt made the exact same suggestions for the exact same reasons as my mom. On a family walk, I was having a one-to-one conversation with my aunt about my future career goals. I told her that I had a strong desire to become an ESL teacher, because of my passion for multiculturalism and languages. She attentively listened to me, like she always had, but she spitted out a completely different idea. She also coaxed me to pursue coding and I refused for the second time, because I had no need or interest to pursue it at the time. All I wanted to focus on was expanding my knowledge in multiculturalism, education, program development/planning, childcare, languages and travelling, so I can become the ESL teacher I dreamed of being for several years.

As I had new interests during the COVID-19 era and had more time to ponder my future, I came to a realization that both my mom and my aunt were right and thought twice about pursuing coding. There are many factors that influenced my decision, but here are the six main reasons I'm willing to tell you:

1. My Unorthodox Life's Miriam Haart became one of my new idols

I watched My Unorthodox Life this past winter and I fell right in love with it. Miriam Haart, Julia Haart's third child is one of my favourite people on the show for several reasons: she has a bubbly personality, she's adventurous, she's brilliant and we both enjoy technology. After watching My Unorthodox Life and getting to understand Miriam a bit better, I began to revisit coding, especially after realizing that my mom and my aunt were not wrong at the end!

I had the opportunity to view Miriam's work on her website. I discovered that she built apps that are intended to help women achieve optimal breast health, and to encourage environmental health. Two of her most popular apps she developed are Norma and Recyclable. She received merits for a number of apps sheccreated, including Norma and Recyclable. After discovering her achievements online, I was bowled over! I told myself, "I want to be just like Miriam, but instead of making apps like Norma and Recyclable, I want to make games and apps that will foster intellectual, spiritual and social wellbeing, as well as inclusivity".

In May, I gathered all of my resources, including an iPad app called Grasshopper. On Grasshopper, I'm able to learn coding for free, as well as receiving certificates of completion once I'm finished a specific course.

On Friday night, I completed a course called Coding Fundamentals on Grasshopper that I received a certification of completion for. You can see it down below!

2. To design mobile word puzzle games for people with visual impairments

In college, I took a course called Adaptive Recreation, which was a compulsory course for the Recreation and Leisure Services diploma program I took. Like a sponge, I soaked in all the information that was given to me in class, and I enjoyed every moment of learning. I loved exploring the many ways you can modify programs and activities for individuals with disabilities.

For a major assignment, we were supposed to create a piece of adaptive equipment that a person with a disability can use during a recreational program/activity. Since I was obsessed with the Braille alphabet, I created a Braille Snakes and Ladders game board that people with vision impairments can utilize during community events like game nights. My professor was attracted to my piece of equipment and took great pleasure in viewing it. As a result of my tremendous work on that assignment, she gave me an A+!

Since I successfully built a Braille Snakes and Ladders game board, I figured I could design Braille word search puzzles without a problem! If I was capable of creating a Braille game board, why would I have an issue designing mobile word search puzzles in Braille?! To increase accessibility, Braille word search puzzles would be accessible on both Android and iOS devices.

3. To bring people to their dream destinations through both virtual and augmented reality experiences

Travelling is a beautiful hobby, but it is also expensive and sometimes unrealistic, depending on the type of lifestyle one lives. We often develop a list of destinations that we dream of travelling to, but we don't always go through the whole list. I'm no different than most people who have a goal of travelling to heaps of places around the world.

There are a number of places that I've dreamed of travelling to for years. To name a few of them, I wish to visit Kazakhstan, Thailand, Mongolia, India, Turkey and Indonesia one day. Depending on how much time I end up having and what I'm doing with my life in the future, it may or may not be reasonable for me to travel to these specific places.

Although I might not be able to physically travel to these countries, I can allow myself to virtually travel to these places. Some of the advantages of virtual travel are not having to worry about packing, not having butterflies in your stomach before hopping on a plane, not having to go through security and waiting for long hours at the airport, not spending loads of money on travel tickets and being able to travel whenever you want! I would choose one popular tourist site and create a virtual and/or augmented reality experience based on that particular tourist site. For instance, if I want the game to take place in Mongolia, I would pick a specific tourist site in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and use that tourist site to create my virtual/augmented reality experience!

4. To take my creative and intellectual gift to the next level

Like I've asserted in many Vocal articles I've written, I've been a naturally creative and intellectual person by the time I was a young child. As a result of having a special talent for creative arts and intellectual activities like puzzle solving, writing and reading, I was also highly gifted in technology and graphic design, according to my mother. They all interconnected with each other.

Before I became interested in puzzle solving, reading and writing, I played tons of arcade games on my GameBoy and on the PC. PC games like NeoPets Hassee Bounce, NeoPets Ice Cream Machine, Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust-a-Move) and a few of the Kirby games I played on the GameBoy were my first sources of inspiration for wanting to create my own games.

During my teenage years, I took great pleasure in drawing many cartoon and game characters, to bring back special memories of me playing a variety of PC and GameBoy games. Many of my close friends at school and out of school were avid gamers and loved to draw anime/manga/game characters. I developed a casual friendship with a teenage boy at sleep away camp who was big into video games and always carried his Nintendo DS with him. When I asked him what he wanted to do for a career, he stated that he wanted to enter the video game world. In other words, he wanted to pursue a career in video game development. I had no doubt about that, because I could already sense his fervent love and passion for video games.

As a result of befriending many avid gamers, I had the idea of going to college for video game development. My mom wasn't a fond of that idea, because she didn't think I was "passionate enough about video games to pursue a career in the video game industry". She also didn't realize that video game design courses also included coding courses, so she didn't really like the idea of me pursuing a career in the industry. Once I found out you don't have to have any formal education in video game development, but primarily have to be knowledgeable with programming languages such as C++ and Python, I chose to utilize my intellectual and creative knowledge to develop mobile games.

Keeping myself out of trouble is the key to living a fruitful, joyful, peaceful and healthy life. I've gone through a lot of challenges and had to deal with tons of drama during the course of the pandemic. Although residents were mainly in their apartments and/or doing their own things outside of the building, we were still allowed to socialize with each other. During the late spring of the pandemic, the gazebo in our front yard was built and everyone was able to go there to stave off COVID-19 blues. We were physical distancing, but we were still connecting with each others in the outdoors.

Although the gazebo in our front yard was an asset to our mental, emotional, psychological and social wellbeing during the pandemic, it also had some downsides that are worth considering: squabbling with one another, harassment towards residents and staff, lots of gossip, physical violence, people being nosy with one another and people telling each other what to do and how to live their lives. I became tired of witnessing all this nonsense, but I also wanted to be with my friends when I felt forlorn and unhappy with myself.

Now that I'm worn out from all the abuse and silliness I've witnessed over time, I want to make some changes for the better: I want to code as a way to keep myself out of trouble. Of course, I still live my life and do things I love doing like going out to different places, being with my friends/family, cooking/baking, reading, solving puzzles, listening to music, exercising, making art and studying, I want to code as a way to increase my level fo personal satisfaction. By coding, I'd be making a positive contribution by designing wonderful apps and games for people to download, play and utilize at their own leisure! I'd be leveraging my passion for activity modification, recreation and leisure programming, puzzle solving and technology!

6. To reintroduce my all-time favourite PennyPress word puzzles to myself and other word puzzle addicts across the globe!

Since I was thirteen years old, I've been a word puzzle fanatic. I began my word puzzle journey by completing word spy puzzles, word scrambles and fill-it-in's (crosswords without the clues). When I was sixteen years old, I took my love for word puzzling to the next level. After my stepmother taught me how to solve cryptogram puzzles, solving cryptogram puzzles became a new favourite pastime of mine. Two weeks after my cryptogram puzzle addiction developed, I paid regular visits to the local bookstores, convenience stores, department stores and dollar stores to purchase the latest PennyPress variety puzzle magazines, where I can find all the cryptogram puzzles to solve at home! Besides doing cryptograms, I also enjoyed playing other pencil word games like alphabet soup, which became another addiction of mine.

Alphabet soup puzzles are less complicated than cryptograms, but they are both enjoyable if you're crazy about word games like myself. Every time I was finished all the alphabet soup puzzles in only one of the variety puzzle magazines I purchased, I had to keep stocking up on more variety puzzle magazines, just so I could have extra alphabet soup puzzles to solve.

When depression and severe anxiety hit me at 18 years old, my passion for puzzle solving went down the drain. That's when I quit doing all of my favourite word puzzles. I stopped going on variety puzzle magazine shopping sprees when I stopped doing my beloved word puzzles.

Thanks to the pandemic, I reunited with my favourite word puzzles, including alphabet soup and cryptogram puzzles. Now, I primarily play them on my phone or iPad, but I don't mind solving the odd pencil puzzle when I'm up for it.

Since there aren't any alphabet soup puzzle games I was able to find and download from the app store, my dream is to design my own versions of all the PennyPress alphabet soup puzzles I used to solve as a teenager. People can download these puzzles from the app store and enjoy playing them on both iOS and Android devices. All of the alphabet soup puzzles would include amazing features like cute animations, upbeat music, versions in other languages like German and Turkish, and have in-app purchases!

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