What else is new? School and such but we’ll get to that later. I’ve actually been sick all week so in between school, mindless web surfing and sleeping, I haven’t had time to do much else.
I’m an English major so writing is pretty natural. But I like writing poetry and creative non-fiction (and ramblings). You know, things that typically don’t pay (well, if at all). I hate business writing and I hate writing around things (I hate adjustment and polite “bad news” letters so much).
To be honest, I’m kind of tired of writing (after 6 years of academic writing) and I find it hard to focus on writing…hence why everything ends up being done at the last minute (okay, so maybe I’m a procrastinator in general). I know I will always write in some way – whether it be professionally or not (or published or not), I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’ll ever know.
But I don’t know what I want to do. I am fascinated by technology and I love the internet. Immensely My life will be incomplete without it. I do well in text-based communication which probably draws me to it. Although there is more multimedia on the internet than ever, it’s still primarily a text-based medium.
To that end, I am fascinated with digital poetry, web documentary and e-literature. But you can’t make a living doing that can you? It’s barely known right now. And poetry is always dead as per usual (but can multimedia bring it to life?). Now that I’m learning meter…maybe I suck a poetry anyway but prose is always fair game haha.
I did do a web design certificate but I still don’t know enough for modern web development If it was 2000 it’ll be fine but it’s not. This is the world of mobile web, no-flash interactivity and content management systems and blogging software (like WordPress etc). Once was part of Geekery, the internet is now part of modern culture. It will change and evolve over time.
But I don’t know what will happen. No one does. Will web developers become extinct as it becomes easier and easier to have a web presence (or even forgoing the website and just use social media or whatever cool thing of the time). Maybe? Will web developers/designers become the typesetters (another design job that pretty much disappeared with desktop publishing by the end of the 20th century) of the 21st century? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does but we will. When the time comes.
It’s already really easy for the average person to make a simple website using any of the CMS/blogging packages out there (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla! etc) or the many online site makers (WordPress.com, weeby.com, webs.com and many other providers) and then there is the WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) website building software (Adobe Muse + others). It’s just the serious people, the tech phobic and the medium-large organizations that typically need custom coding and design nowadays…if it wasn’t for mobile apps which are currently all the rage.
That said templates and WYSIWYG software has been around for a long time (Frontpage anyone? Man, that sucked. Yes, I did use Frontpage once a long, long time ago….horrid in hindsight). And web designers didn’t go away….
I actually never have used the WYSIWYG part of Dreamweaver, other then to lazily resize a picture or something (nor did I never figure out templates but that was no problem, I used my CSS file).
I’m using Wordpress now. And it’s okay but I think it’s a bit bloated (and slow) and the fact that it uses PHP puzzles me because I don’t know PHP. At all. (Well if I stare at it long enough I can figure out what it’s trying to do but I can’t make it work for me).
But I suck at math. So I don’t know about programming. (Patterns I can do though. Overthinking makes you see stuff like that.) I just know every time numbers are involved all logic is shot to hell.
As for writing. I don’t know. I like creative writing but I know that isn’t really a job. It’s a hobby more or less. A productive hobby but still one of my million hobbies (why do I have so many damn hobbies!!!)
I do think writing is more future proof as it’s unlikely in my lifetime that something can completely replace a human writer. But I could also fall back on it I guess. But maybe thinking that far ahead is overthinking. Not that this isn’t.
Is there job in overthinking? Where you can just pace around in a empty room and over think….I can do that! But really, what kind of writer isn’t an overthinker!