Computer software comes easily to me… or at least it used to. When I was in the 4th grade, our family got our first computer. We were ahead of most families at the time, and it was only because my dad’s parents had jumped on the PC bandwagon. I think our first one was theirs before ours. They got a newer model and passed it on to my dad.

So from grade school, I was learning to use Microsoft Works (predecessor to Word). I liked fiddling with it, and I wrote some short papers using it.

In high school, I took Word Processing, which was essentially to teach us to use Microsoft Word. Since I already knew the program, the teacher let me work at my own pace through the book, and then moved me on to self-studying Word Perfect and a couple of other programs. I got pretty good at figuring out how to make software do the things I wanted it to do.

This served me well for a long time. And then the internet came along and changed everything. I dabbled in creating my own website in college, and it was terrible. Writing html is not intuitive. I started this blog years ago, and I still don’t quite get how to do the design work for it. Last spring I made it to half of the sessions of a Photoshop class through the library, which gave me just enough knowledge to be completely stuck most days in using the program. And lately I’ve been attempting to update things on our church website. Ugh. Once again, trying to understand html leaves me feeling bewildered.

I don’t understand it. Why was this stuff so easy when I was younger? Is it just that aging complicates the learning process? Or am I wired to think like Bill Gates and can only understand Microsoft (horrible thought)?

I hate feeling stupid. I’ve shared that before. This whole thing where I attempt to learn new computer skills even while everything keeps changing at a dizzying pace leaves me stuck. Even trying to review “simple” tutorials makes me feel useless. There’s a block in my brain and I don’t know how to get around it. Ugh.