Filled with Fear,Lost and Overwhelmed

Im 44 Year old and on Disability. I have a Graduate Degree in reading books and writing papers.Many regrets, one of the biggest is a Liberal Arts Degree. I need to find a career, I THINK I like computers, the biggest attraction to me is opening a laptop anywhere anytime and earning a living.
Im deathly afraid of Math, i have some kind of math disability. for instance, ive taight myself fractions over and over again and go to use it a year later and its not retained. I skated thru both Psychology statistics and regular stats for my math requirement. i wish so much that i retained even a little of it.
I have been able to follow instructions to fix my computer, ive set up virtual machines and went thru the motions of stuff to get stuff working with Tor, such as a working Tails(before it was so open box easy. the toughest thing i had to do was trying to get my network card to work on a samsung which wasn’t working with Ubuntu. so, i think i can do this stuff. I do really enjoy the feeling of thinking ive learned to do higher level things with computers. But i cant code, and I cant run command line stuff with Linux. cant do anything. where do i start?
I think I like networking stuff, im pretty sure i like Security. but beyond learning to do the stuff, i still cant visualize what it is your actually doing minute to minute in any particular field.
this was kinf of a ramble . any words of encouragement or direction would be appreciated. I see alot of “start here” stuff, and the very next line gives you 50 things to chose from,learn this,learn that. i dont see the path. If i had to guess, Id say learn python, spend as long as i need , months, to know it then worry about the next step then? im i thinking along the right lines? if im really sure i want to do cyber security, should i learn to command line in linux blindfolded then worry about a next step?I cant go back to school. but the Vocational Ed rehabilitation will pay for courses.
thanks for your valuable time. i

not at all, find sources that you trust, documentation on the commands, and refer to them any time you don’t know how something is done

that also for any language you want to learn

if you wanted Javascript I would have said go with freecodecamp, but as you are interested in Python, there are various other interacting learning environments or books. SoloLearn, is CodeAcademy, or whatever free source you can find to learn the basic syntax, then I suggest a bit of practice solving algorithms on CodeWars

if you don’t know how to do something, keep searching, consulting documentation, and if that doesn’t go anywhere, ask for help!

Hi Bryce, and welcome.

I can definitely relate to having a liberal arts background and math issues. I got through statistics and appreciated it greatly, but I’ve forgotten just about everything.

I’m currently taking the Coursera Python Specialization. It’s a wonderful introduction to the language and programming in general.

Okay first of all having any disability doesn’t mean you are any less then any other human. So get that part out of your head for now okay?
Then the Math part when you don’t get math it doesn’t mean that there is any math disability. It just means that you haven’t figured out what teacher/methode to learn it works for you yet. Seeing your age is 44 and referencing the book reading. I think what you have being doing so far is using the old school methode of learning. Over and over again until you got stuck and frustrated. So why don’t you look up onto methodes to learn how to learn instead. Try the Feyman methode/draw things out onto paper this worked for me :3 and worked like magic our figure out something that is for you.
About Linux yes it is hard so why not take it easier and start to do HTML/CSS it is a great help and can give you insight of how to think like a computer and, it helps visualizing the code into blocks, distances.
Python is a good langause at all but, start asking yourself how do you want to learn it first? Make a plan you don’t need to learn everything out of your head we have Google for that. Just learn to think like a computer and know how and where to find things.
The next step it will come in time. Just know when you are worried about it all your really doing is fighting against your own imagination. It’s not a set path.

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