Day 20: Past Efforts

Today, while sorting through sheaves of loose papers, I chanced across an artifact of a recently previous self-education endeavor; several pages, covered on both sides with lists, charts and personal annotations concerning the fundamentals of music theory. I remember well sitting down to scrawl it all out in my particular, comically small chicken-scratch two years ago, and the information laid out there is more or less retained. You could say it was successful, except that I still compose and arrange at a snail's pace, sing less than a third as well as I could, and cannot play any instrument tolerably in a live context.

Application was the missing piece there, and an obvious one, yet also the one that most disrupted my volatile ego. I flatter myself that I am a reasonably quick study in the theoretical aspect of most things, but I cripplingly shy away from actually practicing, where I know I will be faced with an ability to create that is--at least initially--very limited next to my ability to imagine and devise. It still blindsides me sometimes to realize that my egotism manifests in that particular way, given that the skill I take the most justifiable pride in, my writing, was earned through writing millions and millions of mediocre words that turned into good ones after some twenty years of constant effort. Yet, there it is.

Of course, I do not discount the value of the theoretical basis I possess, it is what turns a mechanical skill into a thoughtful craft, given enough practice. But these days, I tend to feel that theoretical learning is best paired with application for reinforcement; I am without question a 'learn by doing' type. In the spirit of that, I've picked my next self-education endeavor: rebuilding my HTML and CSS skills from the ground up, working straight through the W3C documentation on both specs. I intend to start into that endeavor on Thursday, and my progress metric will be a showcase of and display of what aspects of each specification I have studied that day. Every second week, I will test myself by setting aside a time to design and code simple websites from scratch, checking how much time it takes me from start to finish. This will reinforce my understanding of the specifications as cohesive units, instead of just modules.

Goals:
Weekly Income From Creative Endeavors - $5/$500
Adhere to Daily Schedule - No
Write 5,000 Words/Day - 0/5,000
No Artificial Ingredients in Diet - No
115 to 135 g of Protein - Yes, 117g
Weight of 77 kg, 8% Body Fat - 70.7 kg, 12% Body Fat
Practice Singing - Yes

 Still learning,
~L