Learning As I Go

I’m the youngest child in my family. This has made me be very flexible in everything I do. Sure there are perks to being the youngest as I’m sure any older sibling will be glad to highlight. As a child, I wouldn’t call these life lessons perks, but now that I’m grown, I can appreciate some things I’ve learned. I didn’t need that cookie anyway, it was going straight to my hips. I don’t need to play that video game, because it’s much more fun watching my older siblings play… honest! Basically I’ve learned to roll with the punches in life. There is no doubt life is going to throw me a few lemons. It’s my job to be persistent and not give up. Eventually, I’m going to get a cookie and my turn will come around on the video game. Sure I won’t be as good at them as my sibling are and I’ll end up playing by myself (they were done with the game by this hypothetical time) but my turn is coming!

When I started this blog, I quickly modified a template that allowed me to somewhat match my website design that was already in place at the main website. As time grew, I also grew as an amateur web designer. I’ve learned all kinds of new tricks and it’s always bothered me that I modified a template I didn’t create myself. It was the same when I wasn’t blogging. I was constantly trying to make my own template for TNG. I’ve finally conquered that and now I’m onto conquering WordPress.

What you see above is how far I’ve come on my new design. As you can see, I figured out a lot of the quirks of designing my WordPress template from scratch. However, I have to go back to the drawing board because while I like aspects of the design. Once I had all three columns lined up, it looks too busy for me. Once I started looking at how busy it looked I don’t like many more things about it.

Why am I taking the time to blog about this? Well why not? I love sharing all the aspects of this website on my blog. Mostly because I’m a rambler. I like to talk a lot. Most people think I’m very quiet but if you engage me in website or genealogy talk, I can go for hours. In all honesty I feel like this blog is a glimpse into my life whether it be talking about my Fisher Price Little People, using Google Earth to travel from the comfort of my pajamas, and over-sharing about my website foibles.

So what am I going to change in the new design? Definitely the number of columns. If I stick with three columns (which I doubt), I’ll have the thinner columns on the same side. I really think I’ll go for the 2 column look though. I already have some ideas on how to incorporate the things on the left into the right column.

I refuse to give up though. More than once I’ve wanted to just chuck all this product testing and find a template to use. I won’t learn anything from that though. So my training as the youngest in the family is kicking in and I’m learning patience again. Not to mention this website is something that I’m really proud. I’ve learned a lot about myself by teaching myself everything that I’ve put up here. It’s something that I’ve done that impresses my siblings and my parents. Any younger sibling will tell what a feat that is! I’ve impressed them! They think I’m a little bit cool!

So that’s the latest chapter in my website soap opera. Now it’s time to go to PhotoShop and start messing around with colors and design. That’s the fun part!