Finding my way with WordPress

A long time ago, 15 years or so I learned PHP 5 and JavaScript as well as HTML and CSS. I was building some pretty cool little apps for fun until I had a major health scare. It took six months to get back to a place where I could code again. Unfortunately, I shied away from the PHP and just banged my head against a wall with JavaScript. It seemed like every time I caught up with the technology the technology leaped forward even faster than I could learn.

So, I strictly built static sites for a year or two until my Pastor asked if I could maintain the Church's website. It was simple PHP and hardly any JS, so I agreed to do it. This was a volunteer position I held for about 8 or so years. I learned about including headers and footers and dynamically building navigation bars. The experience was great, and it gave me some purpose as I was struggling to find some at that time.

In 2020 I delivered my last version of the website to my church and handed over duties to the church's administrator. Next, I learned Bootstrap and began using that to build sites both static and dynamic. I was then approached by a gentleman in my church who wanted a 10-page website for his business. The project took way longer than it should because I, once again, started having major health issues. But I delivered the project about a year later and it looked pretty good and was totally responsive.

Fast forward a little bit and I went down the many rabbit holes of Udemy until I came out the other side. A friend talked me into revisiting PHP and WordPress. I've been doing that recently and I am loving the power of WordPress. The things you can do under the hood if you know a little PHP is incredible. I'm using PHP 7 now and it is a breath of fresh air. I'm looking to build out some plugins and themes and see if I can market them. I also want to be a WordPress designer and build beautiful clean UI's that are pixel perfect and just make sense.

I've been pair programming as of late and I am enjoying that as well. It is good to have someone to bounce ideas off of. One of the things I would love to do is build WordPress sites for non-profits and churches as I was a Pastor by calling. I feel like I could utilize my soft skills learned from being in the ministry and leverage them to build relationships to market my talents.

I do struggle with Imposter Syndrome as I have more incomplete projects than completed ones, but every time a door has closed some lightbulb has gone on for me and given me ideas for how to move forward. I I'm feeling better than in years past and I think I have gained a sense of patience throughout all of these ordeals.

If you need a pick me up know this. If a 50-year-old disabled person like me can work at coding and make sense of it, then I want to encourage you to follow your dreams too. I've gone down a lot of dead-end roads in my life, but I have gained a lot of useful knowledge from it.