I don’t want to learn!

<RANT>

There are many, many things I want to do. But I simply don’t have the time or the resources or the skill for most of them, especially since my GCSE exams are coming up, and I am busy procrastinating most of the time. I always tell myself that in the future, I will do all of these things, although most get forgotten within minutes- this is why whenever I do try to begin a project, I dive right in with no plans and make a huge mess, only to give up in frustration. So yesterday, I decided to make the infamous- a To Do List.

I began with the obvious: write a To Do List. This was followed by (minor amounts of) school work and exercise. Just a reminder. I then proceeded to rattle off every idea bouncing around in my full and exciting mind. Oh joy. To give you an idea of how this goes, here are a few examples:

Design a website

Design some t-shirts

Write more blogs

Start making money online

Learn something new on guitar

…So there we go. Just the first few, and already half are over-ambitious dreams. Anyway, the point of this (phew, finally!) is that I am impatient, unreasonable and easily set up for a fall. Aided by the fact that I am intelligent and a teenager, this means that in my view I can do anything, correctly. I am never wrong, nor do I need to think ahead or be taught. Which leads on to the idea that, when I want to really achieve something, it is common practice for me to start straight away in the easiest direction, without considering possible setbacks.

Take for instance web design. I began by opening up a notepad file and typing the few lines of code I knew. I could do this with a little help from the internet. Enter a <h> tag, maybe some sizing <h1>, <h2> etc, then look up basic colours, and hey presto- my own website. Or in reality, a blank page with SAM’S WEBSITE in blue Times New Roman. I have since learned the basics, if a bit more, of HTML and CSS, and am able to code to Web Standards. To me this means I am able to make myself a website. The fact that I cannot create anything half decent is simply down to inefficient browser rendering, not my lack of practice, experience, knowledge or skill.

Therefore, if I want to create my own online enterprise, I know I can do it. None of this anecdotal evidence means anything. Design? Photography? Marketing? Produce? Leave it to me, and in a few weeks I will be a ninja in every art. Meaning back at the start line. My problem is, I am the proverbial jack of all trades and master of none. Yet I keep going in the hope that at some point, I will get to where I want to be. Now this seems like a case of me being lazy and wanting things to come easily, but this isn’t (entirely) the case. When I have some time, like this coming summer, I plan to spend most of my time working on all these things while I have a large time-span in which to work and develop freely without distraction or guilt. I feel that in time, all my efforts will culminate in a hugely successful and satisfying result. I will let you know how that goes…

In the mean time, here is an inspiring example of how practice really does help, from the wonderful webcomic QuestionableContent.