“I’ve always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don’t have a brain.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

By some cruel twist of fate, my willingness and propensity for constantly learning new stuff has lead me to actually having to do some new stuff.

What are the facts?

• I decided it was probably a good idea to finish the arts degree I started in 2006, with no clear end goal except ‘maybe it would help me at work’.
• I am now three weeks into my second semester and studying a digital media course that is definitely going to help me at work but is forcing me to do things I never really thought I could.

Why is this a problem?

I’m no digital native, my high school only had a couple of computer labs and if we didn’t do computer science (news flash – I didn’t!), we didn’t really get into them more than once a month or so. I am feeling so out of my depth. As someone who is always learning new craft skills, or taking a ceramics course, or going to a workshop, I am VERY comfortable learning new skills. I am happy to be the #noob in the room, I have very little shame attached to not being as good as everyone else. What’s hard is the new skills being so far removed from everything else I know.

The last 2 weeks have been a fairly constant stream of ‘how to’ youtube videos.. of watching those videos three times and then STILL not being able to change the size of a picture on my wordpress. Of reading, watching, listening to all the course resources on repeat, and then crying to my husband that school kids probably learn how to blog in English class these days.

This isn’t a woe-is-me, I-can’t-do-it, post.

I can do it. I will do it. Heck, I AM doing it (look at me go!).This is me acknowledging that even the best of us find some things harder than other things. True to form though, the unit’s #learningbydoing philosophy seems to have won out.. look at this, a bona fide blog post!

Stay tuned, for blog posts that can literally only get better, this is the place to be.