trying not to feeli discouraged

[pinkvampyr]

i have a pretty bad habit (due to various brain weirdnesses as well as a general lack of self confidence) of getting disillusioned with new hobbies and eventually dropping off not long after i start them. typically it's because i feel like i'm not making progress or improving on a skill as quickly as i think i should be, which, to be clear, i recognize it's really unreasonable to expect myself to get a hang of things right away, my brain just cant internalize that.

so i guess i shouldn't be surprised that i've found myself feeling frustrated with how i don't feel like i'm really grasping even the basics of css. it feels like there's so much to remember too and i don't remember things well @_@ (again, brain weirdness that i shouldn't blame myself for but alas) i know memorization isn't the end goal but i feel very incompetent regardless :/

i don't really know what the point of saying this all is, i know the general "don't be so hard on yourself, practice makes perfect etc" i guess i just don't know where else to go to for encouragement from people who are doing what i'm trying to do >_>

[shevek]

I totally understand where you're coming from. I hope you won't give up though, because there is still so much to explore for you in the web creation space and I'm sure people look forward to seeing what you do next with your site

It's important to not put too much pressure on yourself to write everything from scratch every time without looking. Remember this isn't an exam where you gotta do math without a calculator. No one will scold you and you aren't cheating or getting a bad evaluation for googling, reading stackexchange or w3schools, or asking AI to give you the explanations again, or copying over code snippets from other sites or your own pages. I think probably all of us only internalized specific things about HTML or CSS because of repeating it over and over again because we added pages to our sites, added things to these pages, reworked those pages again, reworked the entire site, and so on. It just keeps building up. You get new ideas and want some changes so you'll look at it again and again and your brain will start to see the patterns and it takes less an less time to remember how something works. Your goal doesn't need to be to study the stuff theoretically until you can simply write it down by heart exactly how you want it. You also don't need to become "good" at it, just make stuff that works for you and gets the job done, even if the code can be a little weird at first before you go back and change it at some point because your understanding of things improved.

I don't know if you use any software to get code previews or just the Neocities editor, but if you don't, I'd recommend it; it has increased my learning a lot to see live changes to the code I make, and I don't have to worry about everyone on Neocities seeing the changes live. So I can get away with giving every container a color to see where it is, and some other shenanigans. That helps with not having to make it all perfect on the first try, but having fun in an editor trying stuff out before I commit to it.

I hope you can find the fun in it again!

[Memory]

These things need time. You won't make it tomorrow, and not tomorrow of tomorrow, but let's say, maybe 100 times tomorrow. Let me give you an example from myself. The problem of a self-sorting, self-expanding result table for my game bothered me since many years. I sit in front of my computer, try and try, but no proper idea materialises or the code is just too broken. Simply put, the goal was too high for the time. But somehow over time, I must have gotten to the concept of a checksum (maybe through watching a Computerphile / Numberphile video on Youtube...), like a MD5 checksum that tells you if two files are the same. And even that might be a year ago. But just now, last week, I knew that this is the puzzle piece to make my table work. Now I have a one single digit to identify the lines in the table, now the table knows, when a new entry needs to be added to it. Now it works in an elegant way.

What I want to say is, the process of gaining knowledge takes looooooots of time. Progessing as fast as a turtle (at least for reptile brains like myself). Gathering concepts subconciously over time... but only understanding how to make ends meet after months / years.

By the way, CSS, who needs that? You can make your website in plain HTML without CSS and still have plenty of design options.

[Memory]

so i guess i shouldn't be surprised that i've found myself feeling frustrated with how i don't feel like i'm really grasping even the basics of css

I still have to regularly google search "html img src" and the likes, relatively basic information regarding site building. Also, last night I spent two hours trying to fix something on a page I'm making just to suddenly remember that "background-attachment: fixed;" exists. And I went to college for web development LOL.

I understand that at times site building can be a frustrating and lonely experience, but one of the most important things (in my opinion) my friends taught me is: seeking help for that which you are struggling with is the greatest sign of knowledge and strength. It's all right to struggle, and it's expected. There's a lot to learn! We take the wins wherever and whenever they happen and seek help when needed.

I don't know if you use any software to get code previews or just the Neocities editor, but if you don't, I'd recommend it; it has increased my learning a lot to see live changes to the code I make, and I don't have to worry about everyone on Neocities seeing the changes live.

I agree with shevek here, being able to visually see what my code changes has increased my learning capacity so much. Right now, I use Visual studio Code's Go Live button to polish my web page before fully publishing it online, but Codepen works just as well too and is less confusing to set up lol.

[Melooon]

I still have to regularly google search "html img src"

I had to search "CSS how to centre an image" yesterday (I forgot it needed to be display: block  ) - it's always a process, and as soon as you think you know things, new things come along - if I knew ALL the CSS and HTML.. Im not sure I'd enjoy it anymore - You can choose to love what you don't know, or be stressed out by it; the former is a lot more fun!

@pinkvampyr It sounds like the issue is not with the hobbies you're trying, but with your relationship with them; maybe you're looking for the reassurance of closure and expertise, but that's not what hobbies provide - only time can give you that 

[pinkvampyr]

 @shevek @Gans @awhe @Melooon thank you all so much <3 i was feeling pretty down in the dumps yesterday but now i definitely feel more reassured, and for those who asked yes I'm using VSCode with the live server extension!

[whalefall]

i find a layout i like, i tweak it, it looks fucked up, i ask around for advice, i receive some, i tweak it some more & fix it, it looks great, i feel proud of it, i start adding things to it, and...i hate it. and i don't know why. my website as is looks okay. so did the last version of it. and the one before that. but i never, ever feel done, or even done enough to move my blogs over from Spacehey, or add my photography, or...do anything with it. it just sits there. what's wrong with me??! 

[Melooon]

Sites are never done  It sounds like your trying to reach a level of completion before you mentally take ownership of your site; but thats backwards. You have to earn the right to own your site by creating it and adding things to it.

I would suggest not using someone else's layout and start by adding your blogs and photos to a totally blank site and then figuring out how to make a layout that's really built around you, rather than you trying to build your stuff into someone else's layout. Thats really the shame of layouts; they steal peoples journey 

So in short, my advice is ~ invert your process ~ start by owning the site, then add stuff, then find a layout your proud of 

[whalefall]

thank you Melon :3

[cult_status18]

This is my first time using the random topic button, it's actually really useful. I wish I had known about it before


It's good to know it's not just me I know a lot of why I get discouraged is because I just get moody about it and I let it stress me out really easy rn I'm feeling that with hight school and "the pink spade group" I'm not used to discord and its so hard to talk to people and at first I was really enjoying my time there but I'm getting overwellemd now and I guess that's why I came here since its a lot calmer here and I feel a lot more comfortable and I complained and asked loaded questions to feel better about it but really I'm just trying to push my self to enjoy something that I cant its a lot better to chill here and take a break from it what I'm trying to say is if you feel discouraged with one hobby it might be good to take a break from it and find a different one to enjoy until your ready to try the other one again

Making my website was incredibly hard, and I'm totally burnt out over it, but now that Im having to finish high school, it looks a lot more appealing and I also just love finding new websites and I want to continue being a part of that

for the longest time, I was obsessed with smelting for some reason, it was a special interest I guess but on my 17 birthday, I got an actual smelter, and on that day I was in a terrible mood and I completely flipped out when things didn't turn out right after that I just didn't use it and I stopped caring about it so much and its just sitting in the shed I could go back to trying it again I wouldn't be as interested as before but at the same time if I messed up again I wouldn't feel as bad sometimes we take things too seriously when we need to just relax about it its good to be mad sometimes you can always go back to it I Know I Did a million times for my site and I'm really proud of what I made even if its still unfinished

[jerikosan]

hey guys. i'm a webmaster coming back to my site after a break for some life events. trying to get back into regularly maintaining and updating and improving/building it. it's been getting traction lately! like, way more than i've ever seen before (i did some promotional art for it a week or two ago). i'm happy to see it getting views and even some positive feedback and interaction. but coming back to my site, aside from trying to get back into the same design headspace i was in when i was working on it heavily, all i can see is everything wrong with it.

i don't like the layout of the entire site because it's from a template and it's a huge pain to maintain and add things to and i just feel like it should be better. i feel like a lot of my pages are just badly designed and are in need of redos. i barely have much content on my site and the content i do have feels super shitty. i wonder if my design sensibilities have changed since i made it too because i just struggle to find anything positive about it now. even when i'm not comparing my site to everyone else's i feel like i've put so much effort into making something i suddenly find myself so unhappy and dissatisfied with.

what do i do? does anyone have any advice? i'm really lost here. i just want to get it back to a site i'm proud of and feeling that sense of pride suddenly fall apart and be replaced with resentment is really tough right now.   

[sashasparrow]

it can be so easy to feel discouraged. the process of creation is sisyphean, lol. you feel like you reach a point where you "get" it, then you start seeing new/cool stuff and you have to start learning all over again. in drawing i've heard it called "hand vs eye", where as your skill improves so does your ability to notice what you're doing wrong.

but of course you aren't expected to memorize how to build a website! there are so many great resources for reference. take your time, take breaks if/when you get frustrated, and accept that done is never Done.

basically, try to learn to enjoy learning!

[cult_status18]

what do i do? does anyone have any advice? i'm really lost here. i just want to get it back to a site i'm proud of and feeling that sense of pride suddenly fall apart and be replaced with resentment is really tough right now.   

oh wow your site is really cool your totally right about that I actually have felt the same way before, but I've seen sites like EDGY RABBID'S and I Realize that a lot of people enjoy sites that are messy or chaotic and I mean really its just subjective I personally am not a fan of sites that just have that cuetsey cookie cutter eastetic and I don't like sites that have splash pages or ones that have their NSFW art mixed in with their SFW art I am a picky person and there are a million different things that could turn me off of someones site everyone has their preferences so there is no point in feeling like your site isn't good enough for people there are only so many tangible ways to make your site more user friendly to some ppl it is a form of art that is sometimes based off of a bias of how they enjoy the web there are comminalities on the indie web but a lot of sites just do their own thing and that's great and you shouldn't feel like you need to keep improving your site its not tangible bc after a certain point it becomes subjective and unreasonable I've seen ppl get so worked up over this and Ive seen ppl slave away for months trying to make everything "perfect" whats fun to me is making what I want to make and implementing it onto my site and generally just explaining who I am to ppl that's what makes me proud is the expression of myself mabey focus on adding a blog or shrine you might feel differently about that then anything else