The completion of this blog is not just a personal achievement.
It marks the first true step toward a dream I’ve carried for a long time.
In February 2023, I flew to Canada for the first time.
I was a senior studying electronic engineering, but I had no clear goals, no real passion, and no idea what I truly wanted to do in life.
All I had was a vague desire to “figure out what I really want.”
With that alone, I booked a ticket and went to Canada by myself.
And looking back, it was the best decision I ever made.
The first weeks were nothing but challenges.
Before I could take in the nature and the calmness of the country, I hit the wall of a language barrier and constantly confronted my own limitations.
I had to study just to survive—but as time passed, I slowly adapted to the environment.
Only then did I gain the space to look around me, and eventually each day felt full of novelty and small moments of romance.
In Canada, I met someone who understood me deeply and fit so well with me.
Thanks to that person, my time there became even more meaningful.
Together, we began to dream of living somewhere outside of Korea.
And as a way to make that dream possible, we started taking an interest in programming.
Back then, we were a bit naive and simple-minded.
We imagined a life as “digital nomads,” working from anywhere in the world—and that imagination became the true beginning of everything.
I studied engineering, and she studied music, but we threw ourselves into learning to code.
Even after returning to Korea in 2024, we balanced our studies while preparing to become developers.
We eventually realized that gaining some experience in Korea before moving back to Canada would be the most realistic approach.
And somewhere along that journey, in October 2024, I was fortunate enough to get hired as a developer even before graduating.
I built my first personal web portfolio for interviews—looking back, it was full of flaws and immaturity.
But I did my best at the time, and I hope that someday I’ll look back on my current website too and think, “I was still so inexperienced back then”—because that would mean I’ve grown.
After joining the company, I was lucky enough to work as a frontend developer at NAVER, one of Korea’s major tech companies.
What made me even luckier was having a senior developer with 15 years of experience as my first mentor.
He valued the act of sharing knowledge, and he taught me everything from CS fundamentals to how a programmer should approach their craft.
Through that process, I learned the importance of simplicity, separation of responsibility, and abstraction.
I developed a sense for understanding systems that operate behind the scenes, gained the ability to see problems from a distance, and learned to approach solutions with care and attention to detail.
Thanks to that training and effort, I became the frontend lead of a project just a few months after joining the company.
Communicating directly with planners, designers, backend engineers, BFF developers, and infrastructure teams—representing the entire FE side—was overwhelming, but it pushed my growth even further.
It was difficult and stressful at first, but like muscle soreness that eventually turns into strength, I could feel my abilities and confidence rising as time went by.
Still, I decided to leave the company on February 28, 2026.
By then, I will have only 16 months of experience—far from ideal for landing a developer job in Canada.
But with my wedding scheduled for March 2026, I realized that once I settled down in Korea, the window to pursue my dream in Canada might close forever.
So I chose to leave.
I chose challenge over stability.
And I chose to return to the dream that started everything.
This blog exists for that purpose.
It is a place to build my identity as a frontend developer—a foundation for the dream that has guided me all this time.
To be honest, this won’t be easy.
I often feel unprepared, and the responsibility of becoming a husband feels heavy.
The more I grow, the bigger the challenges become, and sometimes the pressure overwhelms me.
There are days when I doubt myself.
But this is how I’ve always walked forward.
And when I look back on the path that brought me here, the idea of becoming a developer in Canada no longer feels unrealistic.
Even if I stumble, even if I fear what’s ahead—I intend to keep moving forward, without excuses, giving everything I have.