I was feeling the pressure this week.

I was stressed and still am a little.

I was struggling to juggle the many interconnected things I wanted to accomplish.

I needed to finalize my resume, create a portfolio website, and keep moving forward with my capstone project.

My list seemed pretty straight forward, but I was struggling to write descriptions of a project I have not yet finished for my resume and create a portfolio that describes and visually displays things that are incomplete.

I had to take a few breaths.

In thru hiking, you can only finish a trail one step at a time. You just have to do the next thing that pushes you slightly closer to the goal.

This was my approach for this past week.

I had my map of the things I needed to do, where I hoped to end up. I tried not to focus on all the mountains in front of me. I just needed to climb the hill I was currently on.

One of the steps I took this week was reading: "Building an Effective Dev Portfolio" by Josh W Comeau.

This short book was recommended by one of the teaching staff, and it was a fantastic resource.

My main take away: the importance of telling a story and guiding the reader through your work.

Now, I love to tell stories, and a life on the trail has given me some good ones:

• Like the time we hitched halfway across Washington with a guy going to Sturgis!

• Or the time we milked a cow on a ranch in New Mexico and the owner was friends with my wife’s high school agriculture teacher!

• Or when we went to a book talk and met a couple and spent the two following days at their house and got a private tour of Dartmouth’s organic farm!

• Or when we had to throw rocks to scare a mountain lion while night hiking through Oregon!

For some reason, however, I’ve always viewed my resume or other professional documents as simply facts on a page. The chance to invite others into my professional life has been a new journey for me. This very blog, in fact, has been a big step in that direction, but writing my resume this week and building my portfolio with a story to tell gave me a new drive and excitement for these projects.

My mind is a bit mushy. Creating content and writing code are tiring activities, but the end of this trail is in sight!

One week to go!