I’m having a fear of commitment issue. I know how I want my blog to look, but I’m having trouble vocalizing it, and even more trouble trying to figure out what theme would be the best launching pad. I’m afraid that if I commit to a theme that I later do not like as much as another one, I’ll be stuck.

I’m very excited to keep working with WordPress. I’ve spent a good amount of time going through the themes and beginning to lay out my plan.

What I’m most excited about having learned are the possibilities in general that a site can do. I need to keep myself narrow-minded, though, and focus on certain things and not all of the foreseeable possibilities.

—–

I just finished the assignment to try and create / install a child theme. Consider myself filled with a million new questions.

Anytime I feel remotely confident about something learned, that confidence lasts less than 24 hours until something reminds me that I know nothing. I feel like Jon Snow:

I’m even finding directions confusing at this point. I tried following the WordPress directions on how to create a child theme, and I’m not even sure I did it properly. I’m also not sure how much stuff I was supposed to change, but I tried fixing a few things that I don’t like on the current theme.

The guest speaker from last week was helpful in terms of showing us what is possible with WordPress, but the material was covered so quickly that at the time I thought I understood, but now that I’ve had a week to sit on it, I’m not so sure I can replicate anything that he did.

I think I have down the basics of web development. As long as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery are the basics, I think I’m finally becoming comfortable with each of them. I’ve been redoing JavaScript and jQuery from the past couple weeks in order to drill the lessons into my memory, and it’s starting to work.

I am looking forward to developing a theme. In part, I’m excited because I finally am feeling comfortable with the “basics.” The Codex readings also increased my excitement. I am looking forward to creating something that looks unique. I know I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself — I doubt I’ll be able to create something ENTIRELY unique at this point — but I want it to be at least a little different from other blogs. Since I’ll be updating a theme, I’ll still be using part of the skeleton built for me. I feel judgmental when I see peoples’ blogs that look the same, and I cannot wait to ensure that mine will not.

I think that when blogs look the same, it strips it of its creativity, because it does not look like an individual. It looks like it’s just one in the same. If you have something you want people to read, the visual part of it is very important. In our PR firm, we have a whole design team to make sure that when the traditional side creates something — whether it be messaging, branding, crisis work, what-have-you — the design team can ensure that it looks good. People are visual creatures. The way a blog looks is extremely important, and being unique is part of that.