A relationship and a career are two big parts of life that require a lot of work. Both require time, dedication and a lot of perseverance. Going into my 4th year with my partner I have discovered the beauty in being able to be with someone who constantly inspires and pushes me. As a software developer, sometimes you can fade into the background. Often to be honest. Some of us accept it and that’s a mistake I’ve made. I chose the easy way out often; avoiding speaking up, extra work and upskilling. I felt imposter syndrome but lacked the drive to work my way out of it. This is where my girlfriend came in, she bettered me in many ways and one I do not credit her enough for is in my job.

Ironically enough it started out with my bad memory. Occasionally through stress and anxiety my memory has faltered. I realized early on in our relationship that this would not be ideal in having a good relationship and protecting her feelings. So I started taking notes. A lot of them. In fact to this day I am still restructuring my Notion layout with tables, lists, thoughts and poems for my girlfriend. When she mentioned she liked something in passing, I would note it down. My goal was to remember everything, so I can, in my head, fulfill her every need and wish. It went from perfume, the right shade of MAC lipstick and places she wants to see to clothes and next year’s birthday wants. I tried to apply logic to it and figured if I have her likes and wants I can use it to think of gift and date ideas. I have notes for these too. It didn’t take long for gift ideas to transform into software related and my first good idea was an app.

My writing is terrible but she still loved my poems. My speaking skills aren’t the best but she still loved my voice. So I thought of an idea, a jar of messages, poems and voice notes. The last one didn’t make sense. I started workshopping ideas, bad ones at that. I even went to the extent of trying to find physical hardware that would be small enough to play a recording but cheap enough for me to be able to buy multiple. As a man whose knowledge is far from hardware, I turned to software. Eventually it came to me, a mobile app where she could scan QR codes on the messages in the jar and this would play back a message. Simple idea but I thought I was a tech genius! I got to work in time for the special day and managed to build a functional app that could scan QR codes and store a voice note that could be played from the app. It consisted of a SQL database with IDs linking paths to voice notes and these IDs were represented by the QR codes. I hope that she liked it, to me, second to making her happy, it inspired me.

All throughout school I would randomly think of app or business ideas, I saved all of them but I never started on one. This continued all through university, I had the knowledge and time but I didn’t start. My partner provided different motivation, to me it was her happiness directly linked to this. It pushed me to build my first app, as simple as it was, it was so big to me. Years and years of putting things off and here she comes and shows me the value and motivation in doing for others. I always knew she’s the light I needed. She made me realize I can always do more and do better. It might sound cliché but she always makes me want to be the better me.

In a more technical aspect, part of this process led to me setting up a web api, database and front-end consuming these. To me that was the basic structure I could apply to most of my ideas. Additionally, as part of the process I learnt more Android and C# (my main language). I realized I could easily learn and pick up new things, although with some troubleshooting and frustrating Android Studio bugs. This spawned off a whole host of dives into my app, web and even design ideas. With this came upskilling, improvement and more confidence. I ended up moving company due to an amazing opportunity at an organization heavily focused on growth and culture. I pushed more with kivision.co.za and started learning about how to market, advertise and look at what products I could release to market. This led to kivision.co.za/stockr. I am not saying my code doesn’t have bugs and my ideas aren’t occasionally stupid, but inspiration and motivation can come in many different forms. I was lucky to find that in someone else, and I am lucky to have someone who drives me.

There’s probably a lesson here, I personally think I just got lucky. I guess, know that you can be better.

I sit here today, wanting my own business, wanting to create content, wanting to write and design and wanting to further my career. I sit here in love with a partner who makes me better.