Feeling foolish often, and in new ways
Me
I graduated from Loyola U Chicago rear in May of this twelvemonth (2026) alongside a flat in Finance. I additionally spent four distinct summers operating at a ample healthcare business as a Financial Planning and Analysis Intern. Despite how amazing those experiences were, they additionally made me awareness akin my destiny had already been decided, fostering an unhealthy viewpoint anywhere careers exterior of my “one-way path” were a discarded of all the period I had invested.
However, that short-sighted mindset quickly changed inside my final semesters of academy and blossomed into what I’d call a important pivot for the improved - all since I started instruction myself a application I’d never touched in my life.
Who tf is JSON?
I’ve been an entrepreneur for as lengthy as I can remember, alongside random side-hustles always since I was in basic school. From sneaker reselling, dropshipping massage guns, rug tufting, rainbow-loom bracelets, you name it, I’ve probably done it.
The newest one I stumbled into during my final semesters at Loyola was workflow automation in n8n. That was the archetypal period I really flexed the stupidity muscle, activated by functioning exterior my ol’ dependable set of finance/quant cognition that I frequently relied on and rarely had the bravery to stage distant from.
I’d heard concerning the application from social media, chap entrepreneurs, and another efficiency creators I follow. All were saying the identical things: it improved endeavor processes, multiplied productivity, offered passive earnings opportunities (the classic), and more. So akin any effortlessly influenced university student, I jumped on the hype train.
My first scheme was to fair automate the tasks that felt redundant in my schoolwork, occupation search, funding research, and essential day-to-day tasks. Then, I’d afterward brace my automations alongside the analytical capabilities of AI agents formerly I archetypal felt comfortable making workflows that didn’t affect AI - all alongside hopes to create the basis of a decent business.
I signed up, opened it, and was met alongside a blank canvas alongside admission to hundreds of random nodes, triggers, and inputs to choose from that I had no idea how to use.
Starting alongside that blank canvas following being bombarded alongside colossal workflows that took up complete canvases made me inquiry my constricted skill-set and if it was equal imaginable for me to do the identical item alongside no specialized cognition of any kind.
These were a few of the questions I asked myself following beginning that archetypal canvas and wondering if it was equal imaginable for me to capture up to those that had been operating alongside the scheme for YEARS:
- What’s an HTTP node for?
- Are “AI Agents” all everyone makes alongside this?
- Why does everything need an API key?
- WHAT IS an API key?
- Is coding my biggest bottleneck?
And most importantly:
“How do I not cognize what to do already?”
Just Quit Tomorrow
“Wow, I’m stupid” is what I told myself, all since I didn’t miraculously cognize what to build first, or what workflow could “revolutionize my productivity” akin forum writers and “experts” had claimed. As silly as it sounds, I felt beautiful downward during my commencement since it entirely exposed how small I knew concerning essential topics in the specialized world. Especially ones that were considered second nature to those additional informed than I, and frequently used in workflows I’d seen. Even alongside the fact I was fair starting out - I, for several reason, motionless expected myself to fig it all out afterward and there.
I realized in that instant and admitted to myself: This wasn’t a part of my pre-programmed script. My archetypal intuition was to discontinue and cancel the subscription to preserve myself from the disappointment, but I replaced my desires to discontinue alongside the mindset:
“shut up and try to fig it out.”
This was my own small way of creating a wake-up call to prompt myself I was completely capable of construction item helpful and had the capability to do exactly as I had planned as lengthy as I put in the work.
- Quick nod to several material that continually gives me an additional push:
- “Quit tomorrow”
- “TONY STARK WAS ABLE TO BUILD THIS IN A CAVE, WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS”
- “Does Jeff Hardy always ascend downward the ladder whenever already midway up?”
Blocking Noise
I spent weeks scavenging Reddit posts, Medium articles, and reviewing YouTube guides to study as much as imaginable from those that knew additional than I did. But looking back, I honestly have regrets alongside how much period I invested in doing that. I learned that there’s lone so much I could acquire from fair observing videos and study before getting stuck in what I call tutorial limbo - anywhere I’d expend never-ending amounts of period observing others and researching random questions alternatively of really doing.
I awareness that tutorials and informative study are continually fine starting points for getting downward the basics of a skill. However, I realized getting to a item anywhere you reap the benefits from what you’re expecting to study requires you to do it yourself and fail. A lot.
This naturally caused me emotion foolish a lot.
Limbo
I’ve been a casualty of tutorial limbo myself since it honestly feels amazing to think you’re learning a new skill. The dopamine hurry from all things shiny and envisioning yourself replicating satisfied you’re reading/watching - it’s addicting. Regardless, the heartbreaking actuality is that it’s rarely always productive. I’m motionless learning to evade falling into that void to this day.
The most damaging action, though, was actively exposing myself to the finest outcomes the accomplishment had to recommendation that were lone imaginable alongside months or equal years of experience.
While in the procedure of learning, it’s by far been the biggest trap and motivation killer I’ve experienced. It’s fine observing what’s imaginable alongside a skill, but never overdo it to the item anywhere you paralyze yourself alongside doubt akin I did. Especially in the age of social media larping, you never cognize who’s fair direct up lying for attention, profit, or in an energetic hunt for new victims to buy their snake-oil-esque course.
What I’ve established to really be productive was starting small and “just doing.” Specifically, seeking out mistakes inside MY way of activity to really study what worked for ME.
Furthermore, reminding myself that the capability to equal commencement was an accomplishment in itself. Many never create it out of the limbo iteration in the archetypal place, so starting has continually been a win in my book. So many former interests of quarry transport hours that went into googling and asking group “how do I get improved at ___,” alternatively of really doing what it took to fig it out for myself.
Wasted possible survives and feasts on those stuck in the limbo loop.
Baby Steps
Nobody comes out of the womb sprinting complete speed (hats off if you did). You need to study to crawl first, and my archetypal period crawling was a uncomplicated workflow that sent me a Slack notification whenever I received an email reply concerning a job I applied for at Google.
Can this effortlessly be done by environment up notification preferences in the careers page? Absolutely. But who cares? The item was to start and create item that worked - and this workflow did exactly that. I got the notification of my rejection to the job in a timely manner to my Slack alongside green implementation signals next to it. Success.
Strides
From afterward on, beautiful much Monday - Sunday I spent my liberated period making random workflows alongside nodes I’d never used before on intent fair for the purpose of improving. Slowly but certainly following two months of never looking at automation satisfied exterior of error resolution, and breaking things all day - I became additional advanced alongside what I was making.
Here are a few of the “advanced” flows I came to create during my final semester:
Job-Prospecting Triggered on Slack msg
- pulls current-state resume and Excel document that tracked my job hunt from Google Drive,
- and utilizes Gemini integrations to query for roles that fit my criteria that I had yet to use for alongside an attached resume alongside curated direction from occupation center data.
eBay Flipping
- Triggered all 5 mins (only imaginable following migrating my workflows to a self-hosted server for ∞ executions),
- calls eBay API for my stated products,
- scores incoming listings according to criteria I set for a “deal” following shipping, seller fees, and the avg of the final 10 sold of the product.
- Deals were sent to Telegram notifying me of how much I’d gain if I bought the merchandise the second it was listed.
Dispensary Inventory Monitor
- Built a workflow for a licensed dispensary in the South Loop of Chicago monitoring and tracking the live inventory of their competition about the block.
- Scheduled triggers made API calls to the competitor’s location three times a day to detect new, stale, and former products at open, lunch, and close.
- Middle nodes handled filtration, formatting, and standardization of all junk that came alongside the responses alongside the merchandise info.
- Final output was spotless merchandise data flowing into Excel sheets that handled analysis.
- I was capable to accurately comprehend and extract revenue strategies, pricing methods, and estimated gain stream from the regular snapshots.
- Every implementation was stored alongside PostgreSQL to create a queryable former of the competitor inventory allowing for inspection on former snapshots as well.
CME Trading Challenge
- Two workflows I leaned heavily on throughout a week-long challenge:
Inflation Report (CPI) flow:
- Triggered 15 mins before the monthly cost increase study released and pulled latest pricing on the futures contracts I was selling alongside from Yahoo Finance.
- Those prices were afterward used to create “first pass” plans for a buy or market alongside particular admission and exit points, all scaled to my hazard correct before the study released.
- Both plans were sent to me via Telegram and were updated accordingly following actuals from the BLS API were pulled and compared to the forecasts, which resolute the scheme that would be kept.
News Signals:
- A second workflow additionally fed me signals during the day using webhook triggers to procedure articles and headlines from stated news sources moments following they were released.
- Keywords were scored in JS code nodes (n8n Cloud can’t import Python libraries), valued by my selling scheme for the challenge, and the stream delivered signals I could act on throughout the day.
Sprinting
These workflows are a small example of the hundreds that I made complete the extend of my final semester, and nearly 50% of the material I made either didn’t work, was dropped, or had no genuine use-case that benefitted me.
But since of that delayed realization, I learned so much concerning myself and things I never imagined I had a enthusiasm for. Just from this experience, I was capable to study and utilize in new projects of mine:
- REST APIs + authentication (API keys, OAuth 2.0)
- Finally who JSON is, parsing him, and data mapping
- Reverse-engineering undocumented APIs (DevTools, cURL, .har files)
- Web Scraping
- JS and regular expressions
- Webhooks, polling, and cron triggers
- AI agents alongside tool calling, immediate engineering, and capabilities of profound memory
- RAG modeling inside my agents (embeddings and vector stores)
- MCP servers
- Self-hosting on my own domain
Those are fair a few topics I can name off the top of my head, and study that catalog as I category this makes me awareness so arrogant of myself. I never envisioned myself coming this far alongside topics I exactly knew nothing concerning (and honestly motionless don’t) following having that one-way street mindset before starting. It’s sparked many new passions, endeavor opportunities, and connections I never imagined myself having a twelvemonth ago.
Biggest Takeaways
If I could provision anyone a part of direction from my individual cognition of continually looking to study new things, it would be:
Just start. Ignore the noise.
The hardest part concerning this procedure was effortlessly starting. More so than dealing alongside the failures and disappointments. Looking back, there were many factors that played a function in what kept me from doing so:
- Threads from SWEs referring to n8n users as “course sellers looking for a quick buck”
- Reddit posts saying “n8n/automation is cooked” (I can’t equal figure the amt of times I’ve seen this one)
- Condescending replies under posts from beginners asking questions
Too frequently we’re fed direction and input from sources that aren’t value listening to, and equal if they are value listening to - their direction isn’t worldwide or applicable. I’m not saying to disregard all direction or applicable norms, but whenever trying to enhance any aspect of yourself, everything you consume matters. If you choose to consume external input, create certain it’s the correct material that applies. Nothing compares to learning what plant for you, and if you expend too much period consuming what plant for others, you’ll never rotate into the finest type of yourself.
Turning distant from the void sucked. I had no shiny carrot to chase and I realized I knew nothing. But in the end it break even 10x additional than I expected.
Present Day
Fast-forward to current day, and the lessons I learned started to spill into my existence for the better. The custom I gained alongside scripting inside code and display nodes led to many endeavor ventures powered by agentic coding, all of which I operated as a student.
My attempt to balance the nonstop ideas I had from my newfound enthusiasm throughout programming, solving problems alongside data, and raw hunger to fair build eventually led to me evolving my biggest project yet. That project and its MVP eventually landed me early-stage acceptance into Chicago’s #1 tech incubator. Being surrounded by several of the brightest minds in my own backyard alongside the capability to study from them without judgement has pushed me beyond what I always idea was imaginable for myself.
Avenues that didn’t be a twelvemonth ago for me lone came following I made the decision to be satisfied alongside emotion stupid, and I anticipation anyone study this feels additional motivated to do the same.
Maybe my own direction isn’t value listening to either. But nonetheless, I really anticipation everyone study this can cognition the identical thrill I’ve been emotion since I started being satisfied alongside stupidity.
