Career
What I Learned After Taking Two Months Off Coding
Two months off taught me the knowledge sticks around. The routine doesn't, and you have to earn it back one session at a time.
Two months off, zero code, just holidays back home in Brazil with family. No side project waiting, no plan to "keep sharp" in the background. I fully checked out.
I thought I'd just pick it back up
That was the assumption going in. Two months isn't that long in the grand scheme of a career, so I figured I'd sit down, open the editor, and slide right back into whatever I was doing before the break.
That's not how the first week went.
The first week back was the hard part
Nothing was actually broken in my head. I hadn't forgotten how loops work or how to set up a project. What I'd lost was the habit itself, the part where sitting down every day to code or study was just something I did without thinking about it. After two months of not doing that, I had to rebuild the habit from zero, and it took longer than I expected, something closer to two weeks before it stopped feeling like an effort.
Motivation wasn't really the problem
I want to work as a .NET backend developer, so I obviously wanted to get back into it. But wanting to and actually sitting down at 7pm to open a terminal are different things, and the gap between the two is exactly what disappears when you stop practicing it every day. Motivation got me to open the laptop. It didn't make the first session feel normal again.
What actually got me back on track
Small, boring stuff. I picked a fixed time to sit down instead of waiting to feel like it. I picked something small to finish instead of jumping back into whatever I'd left half-built before the break, because that project felt too big to face on day one. A couple of small, finished things mattered more than trying to force my way back into the big one straight away.
What changed
The knowledge stuck around the whole time. The routine didn't, and I had to earn that back one session at a time. I'd take two months off again, probably. I'd just go in next time already knowing the first couple of weeks back are going to feel a bit off, instead of being surprised by it.