Tuesday’s class left me exasperated. I felt as if I had gone from floating in the shallow end of the pool with floaties on, to being thrown into the deep end.
The big picture was overwhelming me so I started to look at the smaller pieces one at a time. Since I couldn’t get Cyberduck to work in class, I decided to test it at home. After a number of unsuccessful tries, I reached out to Greg who pointed out that I had spelt my name wrong. Whoops. More tries ensued and still I was unable to connect. Once again, Greg had to point out that I had spelt my name wrong. By stressing about the big picture and rushing through it all, I had sent my brain into a panic and forgotten how to spell my own name. Twice.
This week made me realize that only so much of coding can be taught. At a certain point, I will have to start learning by pushing through the frustration rather than giving in to it. Of course my new rational mindset was quickly challenged when I decided to create a child theme of Twenty Twelve and mess around with it. There were so many different parts to it; I had no idea where to begin! Even though many of the things I tried to do didn’t work, I am eager to continue to familiarize myself with the code and expand my css/php knowledge. In trying to stylize my page, I discovered a neat tool (Image Color Extract) that determines the codes for all the colors found in an image – great for helping me get the exact look I want. I also realized that even though I had all sorts of questions, I knew the right words to search for the answers in the codex – a sure sign of progress!
After a few days of messing around with the code on my own, I’m not as panicked as I was on Tuesday evening. I’ve come to terms with how the learning process will go from here on out and am ready to buckle down. I’m not ready to start swimming without floaties, but I am definitely open to challenging myself by moving into the deep end of the pool. I may also sit down and practice writing my own name a couple times, just to make sure I’m not losing my mind.