I am a nurse.
I am 38 years old.
And I have not started coding yet.
But I have always wanted to.
That want has followed me quietly for years. It shows up when I hear people talk about building things from nothing, when I see software solving real problems, and when I wonder what is actually happening behind the screens I use every day.
I never acted on it. Not once.
Why I Never Started
It is easy to tell yourself stories that sound reasonable.
I told myself I was too busy.
I told myself I picked the safe path already.
I told myself coding was for people who started young.
None of those were completely true.
The real reason was simpler and harder to admit. I did not want to be a beginner again.
In nursing, experience matters. Confidence matters. People trust you. In coding, I would have none of that. I would be slow, confused, and constantly Googling things everyone else seemed to already know.
That discomfort kept me frozen.
The Age Question I Kept Asking
Am I too old to start now?
I assumed age was the problem, without really testing that assumption. But the truth is, nothing about my daily work suggests my brain stopped working at 38.
As a nurse, I:
- Learn new protocols all the time
- Work with complex systems and technology
- Make decisions under pressure
- Adapt quickly when things change
Learning syntax and logic is not harder than that. It is just unfamiliar.
The fear was not about ability. It was about identity.
Wanting Without Acting
There is a strange place between wanting something and doing it.
I lived there for years.
Wanting felt safe. Starting felt risky.
Once you start, the fantasy breaks. You find out if you are patient enough, consistent enough, or stubborn enough to keep going. As long as I never started, the idea of coding stayed perfect and untouched.
That is comfortable. And also limiting.
What I Realized Late
Coding is not a single door you walk through and never come back from.
Starting does not mean quitting nursing.
Learning does not mean committing to a new identity.
It just means allowing curiosity to exist in action, not only in thought.
I do not need to become a software engineer tomorrow. I do not even need a plan yet. I just need to stop treating interest like a promise I am afraid to break.
Where I Am Now
I am still a nurse.
I am still 38.
And I still have not started coding.
But now I am being honest about why.
Not starting is not neutral. It is a decision. And once I saw that clearly, the question changed.
It stopped being “Is it too late?”
And became “How much longer am I willing to wait?”
Final Thought
I do not know yet if I will actually do this.
I do not know if I will open a tutorial, write my first line of code, or close the tab and come back to this thought again months from now. That uncertainty is still here, and I am not pretending otherwise.
But I do know this. The wanting has not gone away. It has been quiet, patient, and persistent.
Maybe that means something. Or maybe it does not.
For now, I am just sitting with the question instead of answering it too quickly.
And that feels like progress, even if I am not sure where it leads.