CSS — It’s Common Sense, Sweetie.
My whole life has been shaped by technology. My mother has worked in the computer industry since before my birth. She picked up an associate’s degree in Electronics Engineering in her youth and began working in computer engineering, eventually using it to be the breadwinner of my family. This inspired my brother, who began to pursue a degree in Information Technology after his six year stint in the army. He got a job in Cleveland, moved away, and began working in network security for a small software development start-up that was eventually bought by IBM. Throughout my late high school and early college career, I dated a computer science major and spent a great deal of my time in the resident hall for computer majors. While I wasn’t with him to see it, he eventually graduated and moved on to work for a software company near our hometown. Even after that relationship ended and a few other people entered and left my life, my current partner is a UX/UI designer for a start-up company that is gaining serious traction. It’s like I can’t get away from it.
You would think that someone who witnessed so many success stories in the tech industry, that isn’t really sure of her direction in life, would think to pursue a career in technology sooner. At least, anyone that is smart could logically see that as a viable route. However, I’m not always the smartest cookie in the jar. I did the opposite. I refused to really learn about it or indulge in it. I grasped concepts that I picked up just from being immersed in the environment, but I had no desire to learn how to do it for myself.
If I’m being honest, I’m not exactly “good” at anything. I’m decent at a few things but I’ve never really been in first place for anything. I’ve always felt creative but I’m terrible at anything related to fine arts. I’m pretty good at baking but not really restaurant quality. I studied psychology but had a really hard time grasping more complex concepts. Anything that I loved, I wasn’t very good at and couldn’t explore until I had school or a job figured out. Anything that required college required a lot of college for not a lot of pay. It’s been really disappointing going from an impressive teenager, when I had high school and small jobs and friends somehow, to a lackluster adult. Trying to be successful at “what I love” started to seem more and more like a fantasy.
But then it happened. My boyfriend studied coding and programming in his spare time for a few months, delving deep into the lessons of CSS and losing hours without effort doing exercises. After months of dedication and studying after he’d gotten home from ten hour shifts, he got an interview. That interview has launched his career with a successful startup and he now works remotely from our apartment. I’ve had a chance to see this unfold, see him smile as he studied and then began to smile as he worked. He loved to code, and he was determined to make this happen.
So, at this point, I can’t really deny it. It’s a good field. It’s supported four of the people in my life that I care about and done it well. And more importantly, they all love what they do. There are the minor things that everyone can complain about with their job, because no job is perfect. But they’re able to sink eight hours a day into their job and be happy and fulfilled at the end with what they’ve done, and earn a paycheck doing it. And that paycheck supports them enough to live comfortably. In this day and age, isn’t this really all anyone could want?
It got my brain storming with thoughts of how I could make it work for me. I was able to see all the different routes I wanted to take in life, all the ones that didn’t really overlap in ways I could make them work together. I realized that working with web development and design would give me that overlap. If I wanted to be a yoga instructor and a baker, or a freelance photographer and a travel blogger, or any and all of these things, I could tie it together with my own website. And I could always pay someone else to do it, but who really knows you like yourself? After looking at what my partner does and realizing that I was capable of doing it myself, I came to see that my stubbornness had really inhibited me. Like really inhibited me, for years.
What drove me to learn how to code wasn’t pressure from my family or partner to be like them. It wasn’t a driving passion for JavaScript functions or learning how to make servers talk to each other. It was an innate need to live for myself, and the best way to support myself doing that. If I’m able to explore every route I want to take in life while still guaranteeing an income, what is stopping me from making that happen? So my boyfriend made me an account on Treehouse and I began the Digital Literacy track with Joy Kesten. I worked with HTML and CSS and made the website that you see in the picture, up there. And it really seems so basic and simple, but the journey to getting here has been so complicated. But really, it just took common sense.
Now that I’ve begun to do it, I can feel myself excited to wake up and start the next lesson. I look forward to seeing what happens when I type letters and an image appears, or a background changes, or a border appears. I’m looking forward to smiling while I study. Now the only thing stopping me is the amount of hours in the day.
For now, I’ll try to conquer CSS. I’ll save the fifth dimension time travel for after.
