I’ve been freelancing as a web designer for a few years now after getting a Bachelor’s degree in Web Design. What I thought would land me an awesome on site position didn’t get me very far after a company who hired me after graduating neglected to mention that my being hired was only because they needed someone to work full time on the redesign of their new website. Once that was done they pretty much didn’t have anything for me after a month or two. So I stopped wasting gas money and stayed at home. Don’t spend what you don’t earn. After that I bought myself a monitor so I could have a two monitor setup, and began to redesign my original portfolio site for school into a site I could use to bring in clients of my own. This worked for a little while, here and there, and helped me get a few contract positions that seemed to have work for me just when I really needed it, but this only enables me to barely survive and stress like crazy when my one of my kids outgrows their clothes, or shoes, or worse, school clothes season comes because my stupid school district now requires uniform, even though that just requires parents to spend even more money than before! I hate living this way, having no money to take my kids out and take them to fun events. If it wasn’t for my gardening hobby I think I would go mad!
So in 2016 I decided I wanted to expand my knowledge and my coding skills and become a full stack developer. I know some PHP, and can read and understand it for the most part, since I customize WordPress themes for a lot of clients, but JavaScript is a coding language I really want to learn. I’ve been able to figure out simple scripts, but not write my own, or really gain a full understanding of JavaScript. Plus, I would love to be able to earn a better income and give my kids more than I can now. I’m tired of being poorer than dirt!
I began on Free Code Camp in the fall of 2016, was able to begin to learn Javascript, but only understand it, I couldn’t for the life of me write my own code. I tried and tried but something was missing. I just wasn’t learning JavaScript in a way to be able to take what I learned and write my own code. After a few months, I stopped. Earning a living and surviving the end of the year became more important. Being a single mom, and having bills to pay, a household to run, dinners to plan, grocery shopping, etc., I can’t focus on coding 24/7.
Then in 2017 I tried again, but with the same outcome. Then earlier this year I found a course on Udemy, which got a lot of good ratings, and was on sale for $10.99, woohoo within my budget, so I purchased it and waited for some free time to try it out. During the beginning of the year a company I contract with had three websites they needed help with, and I could use the money to stretch out bills for a few months in case other work didn’t happen. Once that was completed I began the course, hopeful that this would be the one to help me with my hurdles. I had to skip through the HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap parts since it was going over what I already knew, but then I finally got to the JavaScript section.
In the beginning I felt I was getting somewhere, and could actually complete the little challenges on my own. I thought, this might be it, even though I was just getting started again. Then I got to the section where you have to complete a few small challenges, which I got through until I got to factorials. I remember hitting this roadblock in Free Code Camp. All the JavaScript taught so far did not give me any help with how to write my own function, taking a single numeric argument and return the factorial of that number. Now I’m back to square one, with no idea on what to do. So I did what one usually does when stumped, I Googled. But the only options I found was understanding and copying someone else’s code. How does that help me? Why not just go to the next section and see the answer for this? Same concept right? Now my newly found confidence that I might just get somewhere went right out the window. It has now been three weeks and I still haven’t gotten past that section.
I took some time off to upgrade my portfolio page on my website, which really needed a redesign, and did not have some of my clients websites added for some weird reason. Then my gallery was really, really out of date. I do photography, as a hobby, and hopefully if I get better maybe as a side job one day, so I added new photos, better new photos and spruced it up a bit. Now I’m waiting on a client payment, and will use some of that to upgrade my flat CMS so I can get my blog up to date. I really need to go back to this course, but have no confidence in myself with learning JavaScript. Plus summer vacation is coming up and my kids will be home all day, every day, and I’ll have the joy of listening to my younger two fight and scream all day, every day. No joke, they are hell on wheels. Anyone who was thinking of becoming a parent, if left alone with those two for a week would run for the hills screaming and rethink becoming a parent. Seriously, no joke. Then my teenage son graduates high school in a week, finally has a job, and expects me to play taxi because I can’t afford to help him get a car.
Now how to do I learn JavaScript and get past my hurdle?
I’ve read article after article of how people who never coded before are becoming full stack developers, but none of them help me. Why? Because none of them are single parents with the stress of running a household, dealing with kids screaming and fighting, complaining and whining, well, you get the idea. They are all 20 somethings with no one to worry about but themselves. No pun intended, but you don’t know how lucky you are. I have yet to meet anyone in my shoes, or at least similar shoes, who is finding a way to learn JavaScript. Or become a good developer. Something, anything. I feel alone in my situation and unable to relate to anyone else I’ve come across. So that doesn’t help either. It would be easier if I wasn’t a single mom, could devote more time to my learning, but I’m not, and I can’t. So, how do I get past my hurdle? That is the one question I still can not answer.