Drill the rock where you can
From a Kanye West documentary, a lesson about fear of a field that isn't yours. Kanye was a producer who wanted to be a rapper, two worlds that didn't mix back then, and instead of freezing at the gap he drilled the rock where he could, entering through his core (production), gaining experience and visibility, then climbing to rap as the skills transferred. Juan generalizes it: often you fear starting something just because it's not your field, 'I'm bad at marketing, so I can't win at marketing', and that's the wrong lens. If you're great at editing but bad on camera, don't conclude you'll never be self-sufficient; start through what you know and improve until you can. Julia lives the other side: she cried through a coding course as a teen, quit, swore 'code never again', did graphic design, then came back through UX to front-end, because there was finally a cord she could pull. And the freeing part: you don't need to know it all underneath. You can operate code without knowing how to write it, the way you can speak Chinese without writing the characters.
// trace: where this idea came from
- ↳ video diary @ 9:58 (taladrar la piedra por donde uno puede, por su core (Kanye productor a rapero))
- ↳ video diary @ 13:44 (Julia lloraba en el curso de código, dijo código nunca más, hoy ya no es un trauma)
- ↳ video diary @ 20:52 (podemos manejar código sin saberlo escribir, como hablar chino sin escribir los caracteres)
- ↳ Entry 259-1: The switch and the survivor (el mismo Kanye, el interruptor que aquí empieza a girar)
From a Kanye West documentary, a lesson about the fear of a field that isn’t yours. Often, Juan admits, you don’t start something just because it’s not your ground, “I’m bad at marketing, therefore I can’t win at marketing”, and you set up a mental wall ▸ 9:24. The better lens is Kanye’s. He was a producer who wanted to rap, two worlds that didn’t mix then, and instead of freezing at the gap he drilled the rock where he could, entering through his core, production, gaining experience and visibility, then climbing to rap as the skills transferred ▸ 9:58. If you’re great at editing but scared of the camera, don’t conclude you’ll never be self-sufficient; start through what you know and improve until, eventually, you can speak to it well ▸ 11:37.
taladra la piedra por donde puedes, por tu core →
Julia lives the other side. As a teen she cried through a phone-development course, hated it, quit, and swore “code never again”, then did graphic design, before coming back years later through UX into front-end, because there was finally a cord she could pull, kitchen to UX to computers to code ▸ 13:44. Juan’s own path ran Excel macros to Python-in-Colab (through the NFT craze) to AI models to Sanfanson and everything since. And the freeing part is that you no longer need to know it all underneath: you can operate code without knowing how to write it, the same way you can speak some Chinese without being able to hand-write the characters ▸ 20:52. Pick the rock that is you, and drill…