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What building my first PC taught me

Zeitgeist

New member
So, I spend a lot of time using technology, but I'm not someone who's been trained to do the more advanced bits. I can do some coding and I know how to use most things pretty intuitively, but for most of my life, I avoided building my own PC. I knew that building my own PC was smarter than buying it since I could control the hardware and therefore the cost, but It always felt like something that I wasn't really allowed to do. I wasn't a tech person. I didn't know what all of the parts did. I didn't know what half the acronyms meant and any time I asked while I was growing up, I got shut down (pun intended).
Recently though, I helped to make a game which I soon discovered I couldn't run on my mac. That finally forced me to sit down and seriously consider building my own PC. It was honestly a bit of a wake-up call. I really had to set out of my comfort zone though to build it and throughout the entire process I constantly questioned whether I was able to or even allowed to do this--would I just end up with an expensive, glowing brick?
It really was an exercise of self-confidence because as I went through the process, I started to realize that I understood what I was reading on Reddit forums. I understood what people were talking about in their youtube videos about building. I was able to become at least semi-literate in the language. Even so, I still had constant self-doubt and ended up having someone assist me with the actual building once I'd bought all of the parts. Once everything was assembled and I took the PC home, I had my worst nightmare come true: the computer turned on, but it wasn't linking to the monitor. I couldn't tell whether or not it was working at all. I didn't want to ask the person who'd helped me with the build though since it was really late at night. So, I started to troubleshoot on my own.
After an hour of tinkering, checking all of the connections and seeing if anyone else had had a similar issue with the parts I'd included, I eventually found an answer.
I was able to start the computer on my own.
Essentially, the tl;dr is: I decided to do something I was told was too advanced for me, but because I researched it and gained confidence throughout the process, I now have something that I built with my own hands and I know I have the ability to do it again in the future. I might not be an expert, but I know I can do it.

What sort of things have y'all done that are really outside of your comfort zone that helped to boost your confidence? What did you do to gain the confidence needed to do it on your own?
 

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