Web-Master
As a former hobby, and even as part of prior employment, I have previously administered a few websites. I have always been a bit of a geek at heart. I enjoy learning. Since the day I bought my very first computer I have wanted to write deeply and extensively about a few topics that were of great importance to my own being. This included pursuing many personal ambitions in documenting, organizing family interests, religious interests, hobby interests, work interests, health interests, educational interests, now even public interests, locally, nationally and globally.
My first venture into actually learning about the inner workings of websites first began when I was entrusted with the passwords to change my own information on a page dedicated to people I would play European Air War with. Out of my own nature I began tweaking without permission and I ended up completely revamping the whole web-site. Give me an inch and I take a mile it seems. To my surprise the group was very happy I had done that. I became the effective leader of the group. I would spend more time trying to learn web-pages than I did playing games.
My next advancement into web-page design was when I started paying for my own web-hosting. I had wanted to automate much of the pages. I wanted to learn how to code and create a dynamic live site. I spent hour after hour after work. It worked well for me as it had allowed me to keep myself busy outside of work while ignoring some very painful personal realities that where nearly impossible to deal with otherwise. I would spend hours learning the hard way through trial and error on my own. I would be tired often and it didn’t always sink in.
Eventually I was entrusted with login information to a website of a large community of flight sim enthusiasts centred around Boeing B17’s run by a California Highway Patrol Officer. I would burn myself right out trying to code my ideas while having to work far too hard physically making living with my own hands at the same time. I would almost find myself bitter at some of the friends I had made online and their comments. They clearly worked a lot less than I did making themselves much more money. Those in the Auto-Workers Union lived in a stark contrast to my reality.
Eventually I moved away from playing video games attempting to pursue more personal interests. I wanted to create my own personalised web-site where I could just log in and have all my own information pertinent to myself in front of me daily. At the same time I would rack my brain how to use the internet to create what would be a trades-guild. An online guild of trade-workers, similar in effect to a union, but much more in tune with the natural reality of how the Trades actually worked as I knew them. The Trade Mentalities of Self-Employed Artisans and Contractors that is. I spent so many hours on so many ideas only to throw them all away.
A major change in my life was joining the union representing my trade. The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. I soon found myself as a Union Organiser, an actual Staff Member, which naturally placed me into the right place at the right time to look after the website for the Union's District Council. However, for someone so independent, for someone so used to working alone, it just became impossible for me go ahead and do what I wanted to do with the site. Not only did it have to be correct, the pressures of selling ideas, having them approved by others and then trying to implement them was simply too much psychologically for my creative spirit.
Looking back, I was probably at my best for coding knowledge back at the time. Perhaps if I never took that position I would have fulfilled my personal goals in creating a personal website all coded by me, myself and I. At the time I could write functional scripts and do neat things that I have somewhat lost touch with now. I know what is possible, however I do not have the same stability and the ready skill set to apply while chasing down what ever idea I have. Which is why this site is nothing compared to what I would really want. This site is continual mess, just like my life I suppose.