Trying to wrap my brain around everything

After talking to my mentor, he's got me thinking it's stupid to learn to code: i.e., building websites from scratch is kinda antiquated.

So I'm going back to mastering Wordpress development, and especially using the Divi theme, as a career focus. But I'm still tinkering with HTML and CSS3, so I can tweak sites here and there.

Wish I could stay focused on learning one thing--so easy to go down rabbit holes.

For example, I was learning to build one website on a subdomain with my current website, to build my portfolio, but then got stuck going down a rabbit hole all about MAMP, then Bitnami, etc. OMG, it'd endless.

And every tutorial starts out with saying: Oh, I wish had had this back when I was learning. But it really doesn't have exactly the kind of tutorial I feel like I need that's geared towards learning specifically Wordpress, Divi theme, for development, along with marketing and some tutorials on tinkering the design to be specific with HTML and CSS3.

Are there tutorials for this that I don't know about?!? If anyone knows about one, can you please, please point me in that direction?

I just signed up for Lynda, but I'm still not finding something super specific to my needs. I'm having to bounce around from one course to the next, mostly because they're either too beginner or too advanced for me.

I wish someone made accessories for iPhones like the kind they have GoPro

I'm hoping someone reads this blog post and takes my idea and runs with it:

I'd like to be able to buy chest straps and head gear and all that kind of stuff so that I can film with my iPhone the same way I'd use a GoPro. I dont like the fish eye effect on GoPro, plus, GoPro doesn't do so well in low light.

Or does this already exist? Someone please help me ... ?!?

Reading the book "Never Tell People What You Do" and it really hits home!

A long time ago, the newest editor of the small-town paper where I worked, asked me what my major was. I told him Creative Writing. He said, "That's useless."

To be fair, I think he was drunk when he asked me that and answered that way. He lost his job as our editor shortly thereafter for drinking on the job. (not uncommon in the old school world of newspaper journalism, I don't think)But I digress ... 

In his book, "Never tell people what you do: How to advance your career," Bruce Kasanoff says: "If you don’t know how to tell a memorable story, you can’t be an effective leader, raise money for a startup, be a number-one sales professional, or even get your kids to listen."

Kasanoff's main message reminds readers to practice kindness in order to advance one's career. Ouch! I couldn't remember the last time I was nice. Well, ok, I try to be nice in really simple ways: I smile at cashiers. (Please, do this! Anyone who's worked as a cashier will thank you.) Sometimes I'm nice on the Internet, by posting an answer for a question on a thread, or offering a positive review, but I'm usually wagging my tail and asking for a biscuit afterwards. Like if I put a tip in a tip jar, for example, I expect a "thank you!" I don't think that makes my gesture any less kind, though. So what if I like to tally up my karma points?

Anyways, Kasanoff relieved me by saying that he associates jobs that have to do with "delighting customers" as being able to offer that kindness while also getting paid. Now I'm not so mortified to be a waitress!

On a side note, does anyone even care what people major in these days? I think Creative Writing as a major is quite useful.

Advice to myself

I just wrote a letter to a former colleague. She wants to be a journalist. I was giving her advice.

Then all of a sudden, I realized I should be heeding this advice myself. Here's parts of what I wrote her:

...

Have you heard of Nellie Bly? She was a pioneer in the field of journalism. If you haven't heard about her, read her biography. It's actually a children's book about her--a nice quick, fun read. It's called "The Daring Nellie Bly."

I never got to practice the kind of enterprise and investigative journalism Nellie Bly did. I was always writing "fluff." It soured me to both myself and the world. But you can write about whatever you want, M. This is an age when anyone and everyone can be a journalist. All you have to do is read and write about the news! Every day! Read the writers you respect the most. Find journalists you look up to.

Did you watch the Gilmore Girls? Remember Rory had a particular hero whom she aspired to.

You don't have to pick only one person, though. Every day, read one of any number of news articles written by any one of your heroes. Don't rush. Just do it a little bit every day. Eventually, if you read enough of their work, you will write like them.

Start a blog, too. Post the links to your favorite articles on your blog. Then blog about your thoughts on that article in that post. And then go to the comments section of that blog, and paste a link to your blog post there.

If you want to be a true journalist, though, and not an essayist--take out as much emotion and bias from your writing as humanly possible. Journalists these days are forgetting to do that. Then again, maybe that's an impossible task. Maybe just become an essayist instead. It doesn't matter. Do what you love! Do it well enough for long enough until people pay you for it.

Before you know it, you'll have enough blog posts to publish your own book.

Also, make what you say matter! It's not ok to talk just to talk.

Anyways, if you read Bruce's book, you'll understand all of this.

Sorry to babble.

Take care, M! Wish you the best in your endeavors as a journalist.

02/11/2017

Feeling overwhelmed today. I think I need to learn HTML, CSS, Java, PHP and SQL, or mySQL, if there’s a difference … i think i want to focus on front end development. But i see so many jobs for full stack web developers, but omg where do they find the people who know all this and keep up with the latest technology and trends … and then there’s marketing and SEO and social media … where does it stop? I got swallowed up into a rabbit hole all about whether or not just becoming a CSS master can make you employable by reading through questions on Quora. And then I found the website stoppingscams.com that got me thinking i should just become an affiliate marketer or SEO strategist and forget the code. I mean who needs code anyways? 

how can i find a way to choose something to focus on, stay committed to learning it, mastering it and then sell my skill in order to make a living out of it … ?!?

I also read, as a side note from yesterday when I was debating the jargon “coding” versus “computer programming,” that coding is different from programming because coding is just pounding out a computer language, where as programming is building something, i think they call the thing you build an API. Or, I guess you can build a website or software, etc.

Other things I learned the last couple days: Playing around with the command line from the terminal on baSH (born again Shell) and specific commands:

pwd - print working directory (or pow! where am i now? is how i think about it)

cd - change directory

mkdir - make a directory

ls - list contents of directory

and the ~ and cd .. and rmv … man … -a … it gets overwhelming fast.

I’m liking the “learning the command line the hard way” by Zed Shaw for command line lessons, but also using the Viking Code School's crash course about the command line because I'm doing the Odin Project … but the question is, can these free lessons really get me what I need to know to make a career out of any of this?!? I don’t think so … 

Also, a minor setback, after being unimpressed with Udacity's PHP and SQL course taught by Infinite Skills, I went to Codecadamy, only to find out its updating the PHP and mySQL course and won’t be offering it until this summer in 2017. No biggy. Still have HTML, CSS and Javascript, or Java, (what the heck is the difference? i need to google that) to learn.

i need to keep at it. Can’t give up. My new mantra is “I am successful. I love myself. I am not lazy. I’m productive. I’m an athlete." Been watching a lot of Tony Robbins. Oh, and I also said,  "I'm not a hypocrite … “ Because I read the first part of Ryan Robbins "15 Days to Ultimate Self Discipline" last night. 

Gotta stay positive and focused! But I also feel like I need to stop reading and researching and start coding, especially after watching KillerPHP.com's vlog post called "Top 3 PHP Code Training Tips Video"

02/11/2017

After reading a bit of New Code girl’s blogspot and Joshua Kemp’s blog from links I found on The Odin Project, I decided I finally have to start blogging ... AGAIN. Last time I started a blog, I was about to get married.

I used to journal as a preteen and teenager, I'm talking about bound books with paper and pen here. But whenever I reread all the journal entries I noticed a common thread: boys!

Having just come out of a divorce and being more focused than ever on NOT thinking about boys, I’ve decided now is the time to start journaling again. But this time I’m going to try to keep it focused on my exploits as a former creative writing student turned small-town newspaper journalist, turned waitress turned coder. Coder. What does that even mean? When I was little it was “computer programming.” Does that take too many keystrokes to type out? Maybe.

I have read that hard “c” and “k” sounds are more successful when it comes to business marketing. So the word code, because of its brevity and phonetics and the psychology behind phonetics might make it more "catchy" than the words "computer programming", I suppose. 

So I’ve researched a lot about how to learn computer programming specifically in order to get out of the “career” I’m in, which happens to be waitressing at the moment. (waitressing is very thankless, disenchanting, stressful and physically demanding ... and I hate to generalize but it seems most servers who stay in the business do so out of necessity because they don't know how to read and write English that well ... at least that's what I've observed. I don't know for sure. I do know that I see people with a lot of pathos in the industry and it's difficult to find restaurants that are run well. At least it has been for me. But they're' out there.)

But I digress ... I'm not looking for gold at the end of a rainbow ...

I’m not looking to be the founder of any kind of startup. I just want a more rewarding career than waitressing because I don't think I'm living up to my potential. I'm also continually frustrated as an employee, and I see pursuing some form of digital marketing or web development or aspect of internet technology as a means for me to become a solopreneur, be my own boss, have job flexibility, etc.

I’m thinking right now that I’d like to specialize in front end development, specifically HTML, CSS, JavaScript (I don’t even know the difference between Java and JS right now … ) and Python, or is it Perl? No it’s PHP! Ok, so why those languages? I might change my mind, but I’ve dabbled enough in Wordpress (WP) development to want to be able to really sink my teeth into web design. I have dabbled with the Divi theme on WP. But I was so agitated because I have a background as a copy editor and page layout designer at newspapers, so I’m incredibly detail oriented. And it killed me to not be able to know exactly how to make teeny tiny tweeks here and there with the design when I was building my site with Wordpress. For example, I simply wanted to change rounded edges instead of 90-degree edges on frames/boxes.

But I’m a little worried that if I only specialize in HTML, CSS and PHP, it might not be able to get me a job. Then again, my other thought is that I can work as a “freelancer” in web design. If I can get good enough at these languages and know how to tweek the crap out of Wordpress, then I can be like the Russians and Indians who go on fiverr and score web development jobs for FIVE BUCKS!!!!!! 

I mean, I don’t have kids, I have very little debt (about $12K in student loans from studying Creative Writing at Emory in Atlanta). Heck, I don’t even mind living overseas, so I know I can work for cheap. 

Then again, I also like the idea of becoming a digital marketer for small local businesses. But I'd still like to have more skill with web construction under my belt before I start to myself as that. 

I just want to be employable! And not just as a waitress. And, no offense, but no one seems to want to pay writers of the English language and copy editors living wages. Well, I could try to make a living on BlogMutt, but I’d rather write what I know. And I want to know code. I don’t even know why. Maybe I care too much about what people think, and when I tell someone what I do for a living, I want them to think, “Hm. She must be smart.” And I feel like if I learn a couple computer languages, then that will happen. Plus, why not pursue learning a useful skill? What's the word that could happen? I feel like learning to code is better than watching TV.