Whenever I was in college, I discovered that the best way for me to learn the crazy world of coding was to work on projects outside the classroom. Fast forward a little over three years, and that’s still true today.
Sometimes I feel like it’s crazy the amount of time I spend working on things outside of normal work. If you ask my soon to be wife, I’m sure she’d tell you that I need to stop working on websites so much and pay more attention to her.
She’s not wrong, but I also feel it’s important to keep learning new things. After all, the web is forever changing.
Projects
For the most part, I learn through trial and error the best. That’s something that I decided back in college, and is the main reason why my anime site has gone through so many revisions. Trial and error takes time though; lots of it.
For example, the past three years I’ve spent probably way too much time working on stuff outside of work. The only “real” project I can show for it is the anime site. You might be wondering how the site can soak up so much time and, believe me, I’m with you.
Content takes quite a lot of time, but the other significant amount of time is put into improving the site. I’ve re-coded it probably six or seven times now.
It makes me dizzy just thinking about the amount of total hours I’ve logged into that site.
Learning
Working on projects is a way of learning, but you’re a little restricted. You can’t play too much with experimental technologies if your website is meant to be accessible to all. What I found is even though my anime site has given me real world challenges and experience, there is still a need to learn other things.
Best practices, new technologies, different methods, etc.
It’s amazing the amount of different ways people can come up with to solve a single problem. That’s why I’ve started watching Lynda, or I guess it’s LinkedIn Learning, videos again. For the most part, it may be re-iterating stuff I already know, but there’s always a chance to learn something new.
In fact, more than a few times since I started watching these videos again, I’ve had quite a few “wait…you can do that?” moments. Even if it’s stuff I already know, there could be something small that catches my attention. A little detail can go a long way.
Burnout
Honestly, I’m a little burnt out on coding at the moment.
Maybe it’s the accumulation of three years of working on stuff. I’m not saying that I don’t still love what I do, or have lost passion at work. It’s the after hours time that has been getting a little bit rough lately.
I’ve found that I’m not in the mood to work on stuff as much as I used to be. I have constant updates to my anime site, but I also have plans for a few other smaller projects. Mostly things have stalled out a bit since I just can’t get in the mood to work on them.
I’ve also discovered that when I’m burnt out on a particular day, it makes me rather uncomfortable. I’m not sure what to do with myself, and sometimes I just sit at my desk blank faced, not knowing what to do.
Takeaway
I’m not really sure what the point of babbling about all of this was. I guess it’s just the accumulation of thoughts that have been swirling around inside my head.
With everything going on in my life at the moment, especially my wedding coming up, I have to let myself be okay with not always working on something after I get home.
After all, there’s always plenty of other stuff to do…like dishes.
Thanks for reading along with my nonsense!