Well the site is back to it’s original design after having screwed it up over the weekend. Luckily Mitch had a backup of the CSS file and all was not lost. It did however take me for a serious doubt-trip. I can’t even modify a simple CSS file without fucking it up. I’ve been feeling like that quite a bit lately. Especially at work, trying to learn this new machine–and failing miserably. I’ve gotten 3 reprints so far, and it’s just got me discouraged. I feel like my intelligence has been slipping ever since I’ve gotten out of high school, and if there is one thing that pisses me off it’s something that makes me feel stupid–which machines are notorious for.
Which i think is why it’s so important for me to learn anything and everything about web design, I feel like if i can just learn this, I can feel not so stupid. But everytime I get a handle on one thing, two more step up to intimidate me. I learn HTML, i find out about CSS, i get a handle on CSS, I find out about JavaScript and PHP and MySQL and ColdFusion and DNS and FTP and it’s quite mind boggling wading through the veritable alphabet soup. And it’s all for nought really, since I could learn every single one of those silly acronyms–be certified genius with every one of them–but it doesn’t mean I can design a good looking website. ::Sigh::
Carleen asked me one morning why I never have any problems, my reaction to that was quite strong at the time, though i didn’t say anything, because it hit in such a way that I didn’t know how to respond. My response to that is two-fold. I do have problems but I tend to either hide them or suppress them. Which I don’t find to be too bad since most usually just go away on their own. Problems I do that with are generally problems at work. Work is work, when I’m at home I’m not at work and work problems stay at work. I try not to let home problems and work problems move from their respective worlds. If I allowed that to happen I would come home from work a steaming, fuming, cursing, asshole who nobody would want to be around. I have problems running ANY machine at work, does that mean I should bring that frustration home? No. At home I want to be away from those problems–home is my oasis from the world.
But also, I tend to have a care-free attiude towards life, which I feel is sort of a double-edged sword. I don’t feel i care enough. Sometimes I feel like a bit of a cold fish, seperate from the world, detached from any sense of belonging. With a very few exceptions, I could do without most other humanity. Hopefully those exceptions know who they are, if they don’t I have failed yet again.
If I meet you on the street I will give a bright smile and say “Hello” politely, but does that mean I’ll remember what you look like in 5 minutes? No. Even if you’re an exceptionally beautiful woman, by the time my mind registers your looks, it will be off on another tangent, thinking about one of the infinite projects I am constantly engaged in.
The plus to this is, I feel, the people I care about, the people I really care about, I care about with all the fiber of my being. Sometimes I may get too busy and might not show it as often as i should, but i do. And I think it’s a sincere friendship, nothing false, no facade, you get me, cause that’s all I have to give.
Anyway…my rant for the day.
-M
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15.09.03 at 10:50:07
Mitch
Don’t let the CSS get you down…CSS doesn’t work consistently for me too…we are still in a world where all the browsers seem to have their own way of implementing it. Also, the CSS file for this blog wasn’t something you built from scratch so you are basically forced to guess what everything is for. I look forward to seeing your next attempt!
17.09.03 at 19:04:08
Beth
It is alphabet soup, isn’t it? I learned HTML at home, in my spare time, from library books. However, now I’m in a situation where to do really cool stuff with the library website, I need to learn, CSS, XML, PHP, MySQL and if I ever squeeze it out of the budget, Flash. It makes me so tired sometimes! I don’t think it’s a reflection of anyone’s intelligence though, Mike, I think it’s that the world is moving fast, and technology faster and there’s just more than there ever has been. And we both have other jobs, so it’s not like we’ve been committing vast gobs of time to it like web professionals probably can. And come to think of it, I don’t know many people who know all those things anyway.
As for me, I’m a drama queen, and everyone knows everything I’m feeling all the time. I frequently wish I was a more subtle person, but I’m pretty old now, so its probably not going to happen. So there ya go.
20.09.03 at 10:06:51
Siri
Mike, Beth has a very good point here - technology is moving so fast it’s impossible to keep up and learn everything overnight, but that has very little to do with intelligence (at least - I sure hope so, or I would be the world’s dummest!). Personally, I think it would be so much easier to understand and learn things if the books on the subject would quit describing things in such an intricate way, making everything look much more complicated than it actually is. I find that I have to fiddle around and figure things out by myself first, then go back and read the book - then and only then will the text in it make sense to me. I’m not at all pretending to be an expert, but when things look Greek to me, I keep reminding myself of how little I knew in the beginning, and how much I’ve been able to understand and learn up to this point - in other words, EVERYTHING looks difficult, and at times even downright impossible, until you’ve learnt it! If it were easy, the fun would be gone, as would the satisfaction of having overcome the challenge.
The same philosophy can be applied to your machine at work of course. There will come a day, very soon, when you’ll handle all the aspects of it automatically, no reprints, no problems (and then you’ll complain how boring it is
). Practice makes perfect!
As for hiding feelings - don’t! (at least not from people you trust and really care about). Years and years of hidden feelings tend to settle elsewhere in the body, causing all kinds of physical problems.
Siri