Developing my (Beginner) Coder Skills

Besides my health journey, I've decided to try something new to better myself: learning how to code. I'm starting with HTML and CSS. I attempted learning it back around 2012, but gave up about halfway through the book I bought. Then again, with the same book, tried around 2017 or so. Now I'm at it again.

HTML isn't terribly difficult, as most of it, I'm learning to memorize as I go, since everything you make basically has the same things in it. CSS is something I want to memorize some of, but I think as long as I know where to look when I have questions about a problem I have, or am trying to build something, I'll be good.

How I feel after finally understanding something I've been stuck on.

Where it gets tricky is, what to learn next. I've been hearing to learn JavaScript next, then on to other programming languages (the one I hear most). But others say I should learn React, Node, C++, etc. So I'm going to focus on learning HTML/CSS for now, then move on to what the majority says.

Learning new things is scary, but as I tell my daughter all the time: No one grows up knowing everything. You just have to go into something knowing you're not going to know it, and learn what you can.

One of my first goals once I learn what I need to is to create my blog from scratch instead of using a template. If you have any insight into what to do after HTML/CSS, let me know in the comments.

My Health Journey

If you've read my '101 in 1001' list, you'll see that one of the list items is to 'Get down to 200 pounds'. That's the exact same list item I had my original 2011 version of the list. Back then, though, it was slightly easier to get there compared to where I'm at now.

Though I wasn't attempting a Day Zero List back in 2021, I did have a moment of realization in November of that year. I was testing out Reddit's live-streaming after seeing others do it. Being an extreme introvert, it took a week or two of watching other people to finally take the plunge. One day, I just signed on and went live. I had nothing in particular I wanted to talk about, but I just wanted to talk. Maybe I wanted people to interact with.

Though I'm an introvert, and have severe social anxiety, some part of me wants to socialize. I haven't had a friend since May 2004. That's 19 years. It's a long time to not have anyone to 'hang out' with. It wears on you, even as someone who always says he wants to be alone.

Anyway, I went live, and during the near one-sided conversation, a couple people showed up to watch me ramble, and somewhere along the way, it 'clicked' in my mind that I need to take losing weight seriously. So I actually started to. I took one of my Field Notes notebooks, and started making pages to keep track of my weight, what I ate, and over the next several days, how much I walked.

For THREE months, I was on top of it. If you take a look at the first page above, you'll see I went from 292.4 to 259.4 in just 12 weeks. Thirty-three pounds in 12 weeks. I was walking almost every day, jogged on the treadmill a LOT, and was working out. I got to the point where I could jog for 1.1 miles on the treadmill without stopping or walking. Then depression took over. Over the next 16 months or so, I've went back to just one pound shy of my original starting weight.

But on June 2nd of this year, me and my daughter both decided to do something about it once again. I started at 292.4, and am currently 286.2. There was a two week period where I gained five pounds. If it weren't for that two week period, I would be close to 280 right now.

What's crazy is, I took progress pictures of when I started, compared to when I was around 260, and even I could notice the difference. I just wish I had kept it up. Because if I had, I would be around 200. That bums me out, but I've just got to keep going.

Building my pen/paper collection

Part of the reason I wanted to start my blog back up was because other than the journal I'm writing for my daughter, I don't really write a lot. Back in the day, I was told I had a narrative writing style. I really don't know what that means, but looking back on it, I think that person was just trying to call me a personal blogger. One of the things I want to get out to the masses is my love of pens & paper.

I no longer have close to 100 pens, and a huge pile of notebooks, but over the past couple of weeks, I've started collecting again. Take a look:

What I have here is (all are black or blue):

Pentel EnerGel 0.5 & 0.3

Pilot Precise V5

TUL 'Fine'

Pilot G2 0.38

Three editions of Field Notes singles

Two 'Stone Paper' notebooks

Cambridge spiral notebook

Mint Green top-spiral notebook

The Pentel EnerGel and Pilot Precise pens have been my go to for the longest time. The G2, I only have because I saw the 0.38 size in Wal-Mart. They're good pens, but on certain papers, I just can't use it. The EnerGel and Pilot Precise pens just write great on everything.

You can look forward to many posts about future acquisitions (some coming real soon).

Day Zero Update #1

Like with my Day Zero list of old, I'm getting a quick start on it. Here's what I've got going on.

I've got quite a few books to start reading. In the past 15-20 years, I've only read two that I can remember: Can't Stop Me by David Goggins (his second book is below), and Atomic Habits. So I look forward to working on this particular list item. Any books below you've already read? What did you think of them?

I've got the IMDB Top 250 Movies from July 17th, 2023 saved. I don't want it to change over the 1001 days, and it be confusing. I'm going to look through my Netflix, Paramount+, Max, and Hulu queues to see what I can watch that's new to me. I tend to just watch what I've already watched over, and over, and over.

I added a page link to my '101 in 1001' list under the page banner. Updates to the list will be made there. Soon I'll be adding an 'About Me' and a few others.

Watch out for pen/paper reviews. I'm chomping at the bit to start posting about those. I've got an order to JetPens.com that I'm SO close to completing.