So in my quest to learn Web Design, I find I’m leaving little pieces of myself like a trail of breadcrumbs in my wake (I have recently learned that ‘breadcrumbs’ is a web term, btw). I’m what one might call a mesh-learner. I just made that up. I would say ‘web’ learner, but I would mean in the sense of a spiderweb, not a world wide web, and that would get confusing.
Anyway, I don’t learn just a, then b, then c. First of all, to learn something, I need to have a concept of the framework in which it rests. If I’m given information with no supporting framework, it just tumbles to the ground and lays there, despondent, walked-on, and forgotten. No, I have to have an outline first, if you will, and then I can fit pieces into it, and they stay there relatively well.
I also like to follow paths. For instance, I was reading about becoming a designer. One site mentioned a book by Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think. Which I bought, and started reading (with about 15 other books), and loved it. The idea of usability just caught in my head as such a wonderful thing. So then I researched how to learn more about usability. And found a free online course through Coursera (which is really wonderful and a lot of work, actually, but I’m learning so much!).
Similar paths, in the past couple of months, have led me through HTML to CSS to JavaScript to JQuery, or through building a website from scratch, to Dreamweaver, to WordPress sites, to … ? And this is leading me to build a website hosted on freehostia, to build one hosted on 000webhost, to build this one, at wordpress.com, then to one on bluehost using wordpress.org, and it’s exciting and frustrating at the same time, because there is so much to learn and do and it is so wonderful, but how does anyone ever specialize, it’s like the possibilities will just keep coming until I’m buried, suffocating under a pile of my own websites. I’d like to prevent that from happening, but what’s the thing I decide isn’t important enough to learn?
So now I’m here (I kinda love here … it’s the site where I feel like I’m just talking with people, like I could get you a cup of tea or a beer and we could sit on the porch and muse together), and at my larakloppstudio.com fine art site, and now at larakloppdesigns.com, which is a photography site I’m in the process of creating. And I have other sites for other people, which I’ll link to when they’re complete, and up and running. In other words, when they’re worthy of showing.
But that’s my thought for today … how to decide when one has learned enough, and it’s time to sit back and enjoy, and perfect (in the verb sense “to perfect something”, not in the adjective sense, as in “she is perfect” … 🙂 )? How to ever stop reaching for that next … wonderful … thing … just out of reach?
How do you all decide?
