Hello! Come in!! Sit yourself down… Can I get you a coffee?
What do you think? Do you like it? Is it comfy?
And the all important question…
‘Will you come again?’
Worth it
I heard a story today that made the learning curve I mentioned yesterday seem totally bearable.
A couple of weeks ago on our site we started streaming a bible study programme that is recorded by a couple of our pastors in our tv studio. Apparently, one of the “stars” was approached by a grateful congregation member who had invited a group of friends to watch it with her. It went down very well with her friends and raised some questions with one in particular which resulted in her chosing to believe in God, which she had never done, in spite of years in church. That’s when the website becomes more than a notice board.
That’s when struggling with CSS and PHP becomes redundant…
Don’t Panic
I had a couple of weeks there in my new role as IT girl when the gloss had worn of and the clouds had parted displaying for all and sundry just how steep my current learning curve is. Not pretty people… not pretty at all.
Everest has nothing on this…
Actually, I started to get a bit anxious about it…
Which is separate from the anxiety about being away from my dearests at Christmas.
And the anxiety about being more comfortably upholstered than I was before winter.
And the anxiety about my family and their comings and goings and doings that I have issues with.
And the anxiety about the Count (which is much diminished, by the way).
I have been doing my best to squash all those other anxieties and trying to conquer the learning curve by reading really fat technical tomes. You know, the ones which have cds neatly tucked into their covers (to compound the already vast screeds of information therein) in the hope I could fill my brain with all one needs to be an IT girl.
It wasn’t working so I threw my hands up in the air and actually said
“God… this is ridiculous… I can’t do this”
To which he replied (in his most Australian of accents)
“too bloody right luv… what were you thinking?”
Sigh…
So… I asked him about CSS and ASP and PHP and CGI and Perl and C++ and XHTML etc…
and he said
“one thing at a time ok?”
I replied “Ok… about CSS..”
“Chuck out the books and try making some … You’re one of those learn better by doing type chicks…”
So the fires out front are burning the books and cds and I’m tweaking templates and fiddling with code from here to eternity.
And bingo
I finally get it…
I have made inline and external css that works… (most of the time)
So I say “Thanks God… You must be a bit of an IT guru yourself I suppose…”
And he said “yeah, the world wide web is just my footstool …” (Acts 7:49)
“Makes everything else seem a bit smaller really… thanks, God”
“You’re totally welcome… tis the way it should be.”
Capable is a Mill Stone
Hard to know what to post today without being rather reflective. But am going to post anyway…
I have come face to face with the end of my capabilities and am in that awkward place where one has to say to God “ok, you take it from here”
I am not comfortable with that place.
Nope
Not at all.
Not even a little bit…
I am way too capable for my own good most of the time and tend to manage very well on my own. But now I am in a job I can’t do with my eyes closed …
Now I am living with a guy who has no idea about living with other people… He hasn’t said 2 words to me today, and we work AND live together… I know it’s just his way but trying to share my living space with someone so self contained is like living with the invisible man. You can tell that he is there, you can feel his presence, but you can’t connect with him.
Not my ideal way to live really…
A bit lonely even.
Then, I go to church on Sunday evening, not because I really feel like it but because my soul feels COMPELLED to go and it was awesome in a “God is on my case” kind of way. Which is also totally terrifying to a capable sort of girl.
I’m aware that to go ahead I have to come to the end of me or else I will be stuck right here the same as I ever was, and I know there is more to me than that… But to go ahead is to leave myself in the hands of God and that is where the capable control freak freaks right on out of here…