Hi there! As you may have already guessed, my name is Kait, and this is my introduction post.
I’m the kind of girl that likes to have a plan for everything. I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up from the age of seven. I was going to be a book editor, living and working in New York City. There was nothing I enjoyed more than reading a good book, and everything seemed like it would be a perfect fit. Even books I didn’t love (I’m looking at you, The Good Earth) were interesting in their own way. And then came Great Expectations. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the thing that dashed all of my expectations and dreams was called Great Expectations. No? Well, okay, never mind then. Anyways, that book was terrible. The only upside was that it made me question my career path. Suddenly I could do anything. It was wonderful and terrifying at the same time. I briefly (and by briefly I mean spent the next six years or so) flitted between a range of careers that I thought I might want to pursue: teacher, translator, copyeditor, social media coordinator, digital media manager, librarian.
For a while I stopped there. I did some research, scouted some job boards, and landed an absolutely amazing job as a Children’s Room Library Assistant. Seriously, I cannot stress just how much I love my job. It’s fantastic, and wonderful, and splendiferous. Every day I get to help people find books that they love, and I also get to work on other projects to help with circulation. One of those projects, the Interactive Book Finder, I just recently finished. That includes transferring everything from tumblr to wix in the process. Over 250 books and hundreds of questions tagged, structured, coded, and posted. And while I was doing that, I realized something: I love computer work.
Figuring it how to get every little thing exactly where I want it to be, turning my photos into links, completing a project and feeling so proud of myself that it’s done and done how I want it: I love it. I love looking at pages of code and trying to figure out what each line means, what it does. I love playing around, changing fonts and sizes and alignments. I love trying to figure out what is working and what isn’t and why.
As I sit here, trying to figure out how to shift from loving code to learning it, I realize that I want to end this post with how I’ll be using this blog. I am currently signed up for a Skillcrush Front End Developer Blueprint, and it starts on Monday! I’m so excited! This blog will be a space where I try to summarize what I’ve learned each day or week, and give updates on the projects that I’m working on. My main project right now is a page with all the books that I’ve read in 2016. I hope to be able to update it with some filters to sort it by genre and rating, as well as link it to my review of the book. This project is inspired by Marina’s Book Theme on tumblr. At first I was trying to recreate the whole thing, but I think now I’ll use it to create my own page. I’m excited to see what it will look like when I’m finished. Okay, I think that’s everything for now.
Well Wishes & Candy Fishes,
Kait
Kait Goodwin 