Today, I don’t have much to post about. It has been a nice sort of day – the sun was shining for a while, which is a BIG DEAL up here in the FROZEN TUNDRA of Michigan. Ha.

I have been thinking a lot about my business, and the general direction of my professional life; I have been doing a lot of Serious Grownup Planning about the next (bigger!) stages of my work. It is bizarre to be in this position already, when it was only February last year when I decided to be a web designer for real, and only March of this year when I became the family breadwinner. I am so thankful for how far life has taken me, and how far I have taken myself.

Without further ado, your Caffeinated Takeaway for today:

Life is not going to hand you a set of perfect opportunities and then wait for you to act on them. Life is not going to patiently hold off on crises, whether large or small, while you figure out what you are going to do next.

Life is YOURS. You choose what you will do next, and life is there to bend and compromise with what you intend. Yes, make good plans first. Yes, get good advice. Yes, follow your head as well as your heart.

But don’t wait around. Make steps, don’t just take them. Forge your own path, because the feet meant to travel it are your own.

It’s been quite a while since I wrote any Geek Advice, but all that is about to change.

Right now, I am working on a short ebook (what are those called? Reports? Guides? Handy PDF thingies?) called Geek Advice: How to Transfer Your Precious Website to A New Webhost Without Losing Anything (Including Your Mind).

Before I’m done writing it, is there anything you, my awesome readers, owners of many precious websites, would dearly like to have explained? Don’t be afraid – ask the Geek! Leave me a comment about it – or email me, if you are embarrassed about your question, although really you shouldn’t be. After all, I geek so you don’t HAVE to.

Recently, my insane need to learn MOAR stuff, MOAR information, MOAR MOAR MOAR (about what, you ask? Pretty much EVERYTHING), resulted in my realization that I am so obsessed with learning to do everything, that I don’t know very much at all about a lot of different things.

Did that make sense? That was a confusing sentence to write, so I imagine it was confusing to read as well.

To rephrase and re-explain, what I mean is, there are so many things I want to know more about. Many of these things I already know something about, and some of them I actually know enough about to use the knowledge in a constructive way. Many of the things I want to know more about are things that will help me with what I already am good at, so I have an even better reason to want to learn more (MOAR!).

List of knowledge-y bullet points.

Things I am already good at, in no particular order, include:

• Keeping my home
• Raising my kids
• Being organized
• Computer tech support
• Internet tech support
• Homeschooling my kids
• Designing websites
• Designing graphics
• Writing nonfiction
• Explaining things
• Writing HTML
• Writing CSS
• Color theory & design layout
• Knitting

Things I am passingly good at, and want to learn more of (again, in no particular order):

• Theology (Judeo-Christian / Reformational)
• Philosophy
• Cleaning my house
• Child psychology
• How to teach a classical education
• Writing fiction
• Financial planning for myself & my family

And, finally, things I don’t know nearly enough about and/or have basically no knowledge whatsoever:

• Programming in Javascript
• Soren Kierkegaard (philosopher)
• Economics (global socio-economics mostly)
• Administrating MySQL databases
• Programming in PHP
• Programming using Python
• Ruby on Rails (also programming)

If you made it down to here, I applaud your love of bullet points.

Do you see my problem? I have TOO MANY THINGS that I want to learn. I have too many things to try and absorb in the time I have available. So guess what I did?

I had a bright idea!

It’s not COMPLETELY my own bright idea, because several years ago I heard of someone else who did this. This person was obviously extremely intelligent and also wildly good-looking, because they must have been JUST like me.

I am going to take one thing per month that I want to know more about, and just learn about that thing that month. Not everything else AND that thing, but JUST that thing.

I was going to declare this The Year of Learning Stuff, but then I realized how silly that is because every year for me is The Year of Learning Stuff, since I have been a knowledge sponge for a long, long time. So instead, I have declared this to be The Year I Realized How to Keep Learning Stuff Without Losing My Ever-Loving Mind: To Wit, One Thing At A Time.

In conclusion:

Each month, I’ll be learning something. And because I have a blog, you get to learn some of it along with me. Hooray for you! It’s like free classes! It’s… the Caffeinated School of Learning.

Stay tuned for more! (This would be a good time to subscribe to the blog, so you don’t miss anything.)