I am tired of being the tech-illiterate one

[abilouise]

And I am always embarrassed by how technically illiterate I actually AM, and I do my stupid girlie try-to-look-smart thing and don't ask questions about what I don't understand and get a general gist, so that I can not say stupid things at parties, but it gets in my way and takes too much energy. Tonight as huz-bin and I were heading home from swimming, he informed me that he was planning on working through the evening after dinner, and I decided that I should do some work too, and decided to actually suck up my pride and go to a bookstore and feel really ignorant and buy an HTML book and learn how to play with my website so I can feel like an adult, or at least a child who can successfully operate her own toys without someone else winding them up. I think my massage website is very pretty, but mostly useless, and among other things, I want to knock my prices back $5. Little things, and wanting to try out improvements and see how they work. So I got Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML and XHTML in 21 Days, because it was the only book that A) I had heard good things about that B) didn't make me feel stupid and that C) is wordy and conversational and explaining of new concepts-y in a way that means that I can read it AND comprehend it. I read through the first chapter, in which I learned what URL stands for, but pretty much knew everything else, which made me feel not-stupid.

PS- The thing that makes me feel most stupid is people telling me that I'm intelligent and should be able to pick up HTML easy, that I should find stuff online and not bother buying a book, and that it should take me a weekend or less to do so.

Comments

[abilouise.livejournal.com]

The bit about needing to learn this by myself for once I think is a big part of it. I'm pretty sure I couldn't learn this from someone else right now, because I'd have to admit out loud what I don't understand. I think that part of Skill 1 (I will refer to it as Skill 1a) is some very *conceptual* understanding of what I'm actually trying to do and how the computers involved need me to do it, so that I can put the pieces of information that I learn in a useful web in the right part of my brain. Many people recommended some O'Reilly book to me for this project and I have decided that is a Bad Choice for non-techies because they're not writing for me. I like their Computer User's Survival Manual, though, but it's out of print.