When coding involves, everyone is lost and frustrated, just at a different rate at a time , I know sometimes it feels like everybody is moving forward and you aren’t, don’t worry, for you are among us. @r1chard5mith wrapped it up pretty nicely though, couldn’t have said it that well myself.
I just started too and currently on the APIs section (pulling information from other servers to use in your code), when I first started, I couldn’t even make a successful request, which could be done in a line of code if using JQuery shorthand. It was really frustration. After like 6 hours I found out I am not suppose to do it on my local laptop but rather from a server or allowed domain (like CodePen).
Point being, in my opinion, it is not your fault, it is just that you haven’t learned to do it yet, the moment I stopped bashing my head in for “not knowing something I haven’t come across even once in my life” (aka “dumb” at the time), things started to look up .
You are making the Portfolio so I guess you are dominantly dealing with CSS and HTML. My experience when making the portfolio is that:
-If I imagine that CSS, HTML elements and tags are just pieces of legos (demonic, destructive, pain-inducing pieces of legos, but still, you know…, lego-like) that I used to play when I was a kid and they are there, I just need to put it together, the task seems easier.
-It is easy to fall into telling yourself to read my books, read more guides, but I have found just jump into it (of course, Google along the way) provides you extreme in-depth understanding of the aspect you are dealing with (and you will remember it for a long time too, unlike pure book-reading), that in time kind of form go-to techniques that you prefer.
-Keep the head cool and solve things one at a time, it will unveil itself eventually.
Hope this helped.