I just spent the last twenty-four hours (and months of thinking and planning), working on this website. Not just this blog, but an events calendar that is far from going “live.” Creating this blog was fun for me. I know enough HTML to make some creative design decisions in order to create a clean modern site, with enough whimsy that expresses my style and brand.
The events calendar, however, sounds simple enough, but my desire to create something that fully expresses my brand got me in trouble. For some reason, I thought that since I could build this blog on my own, with a few tweaks, that I could build the events calendar as well, with just a few tweaks. Never mind that I only understand basic HTML and CSS, and that AJAX and MySQL remain distant acquaintances in the long line of tools I’d like to meet. Never mind too, that when I spoke with real web developers they estimated months of work to achieve the quality I was speaking of, and tens of thousands of dollars. I thought I could create a stellar web application. With no web development expertise whatsoever. In a few short days. In fact, I was sure of it.
It’s arrogant, certainly. And a little cocky as well. Along with the rest of my generation, my mother told me I could be whoever I wanted, do anything. What I want for this website is to engage the next generation. A lofty goal, sure. But I am confident that I will succeed. I have a lot of ideas, buckets of enthusiasm and energy, and a drive to get things done.
So, do I buy into the hype that Generation Y is arrogant? Yes, sirree. And proud of it.
Then again, I could fail.
I already discovered I was (way) over my head when I decided I could learn developer code in just a couple days. I have an events calendar that I could link to, but I don’t like it and it’s not up to my standards. But I’ve learned from doing, instead of just talking. While I couldn’t take my idea past a certain point without help, I gave it my all, tried my best, and built up my base of knowledge. I now know more then when I’ve started. For full millennial effect, our confidence needs to be combined with the assertion that it’s okay for us to fail. That allows us to turn challenges into opportunities, failure into success. Here’s to the success of this blog (or possible failure). I hope you stay tuned – cheers!