tl;dr I need to make a programming portfolio but I'm struggling with justifying it to my brain
Hey, so... there's a thing that's been bothering me for a long time. I've never been able to "fit in" at most jobs. I don't really have "a thing I'd enjoy working in" which, in my case, is a problem because I just can't give up more than a half of my time to something I don't care about, it really messes with my brain and I can't stay in that situation for long.
Programming caught my attention because it relies on stuff I'm quite good at. Solving problems, some creativity, more detailed work too. I have a few online courses done so I'm not totally clueless etc. I have an idea of how searching for a job looks now and other basics.
Now, for the main course: I'm trying so hard to find a field to stay in but for some reason it's weirdly difficult. I think it's because I'm not sure what this or that position really looks in day to day life. I was interested in C# and backend the most but I'm not sure anymore. Is it only working on web pages all day long? I can see it's usually commerce and I don't like that too much. I'm open to other languages too, that's not a problem.
On top of that everyone says "do a portfolio" and they're right because that's probably the only way to showcase the skills a person has but that's where things start to get tricky. My mind just refuses to do a project for the sake of doing it, straight up "nope" and it just doesn't want to cooperate. I tried to look into open source projects to help someone else but they're too advanced, I'm in that weird void between courses and real life applications. I tried to ask people in beginner groups if they'd like to make something together but no one answered, nobody I know needs an app for anything too so it's no use.
I think it's more neurodivergency related thing than strictly tech. Trouble with decision making, motivation, many people don't understand that.
My reasoning behind all this is that if I find a project that's needed by other people, I'd be able to complete it. I haven't found anyone with a similar issue yet though.
if you take a step back: do you... like what you're studying or working on? i'm not saying that you have to love it, but if you're having a hard time self-motivating on a particular subject, you might just not like it very much. i personally always figured programming was something i'd like and be good at given my specific spicy brain but turns out it wasn't, so i pivoted into programming adjacent spaces (like the other poster mentioned) instead. i think i dropped out of like two different boot camps before i figured that... well, i just didn't like it, it it didn't motivate me, and it wasn't for me.
often, these programming-adjacent spaces (eg: cybersecurity, system administration, integration management, salesforce admin) have problem solving with more fixed parameters than programming - like looking at a word problem instead of a blank page - and could work better for you.