Mumbling Into My Shirtwaist

My irrational fears have welcomed a newcomer into the fold.

Today, whilst despairing over ever finding a job that involves even slight less bacon-grease scraping, I took my mind off a fruitless search with some casual email-reading. I alighted upon an email from CodeAcademy, with whom I tried to learn skills many months back. In a moment of peerless enthusiasm for my left brain, I clicked through to take up where I'd left off.

After completing three small exercises, I felt proud and clever. I would code! Or learn to recognise some code! Or retain information longer than four minutes!

Eighteen seconds after opening the fourth exercise, I was sitting up very, very straight in my chair, unable to move, paralysed by the overwhelming realisation that I would not code. That my brain was simply and completely unable to grasp the concept of coding. And that it all frightened me to the point of immobilised imbecility because I couldn't understand.

My last similar experience was at the age of three or so, when I suddenly realised that I didn't know how the toaster worked. I lay rigid in bed for hours every night and couldn't go into the kitchen for weeks.

Hopefully I'll be able to stand up soon.