A little over a year ago the web designer for Briercrest College and Seminary casually suggested that I go into web design. We had brushed shoulders off and on for a good five years and he figured that I had the personality and tech-savvy to join the ranks of the internet wizards and build websites like he did. The idea intrigued me. I had always enjoyed working with computers and I was able to figure out basic HTML and CSS all by myself to fix the Distance Education website. I asked him for more details and he introduced me to the ultimate website for learning all things Web Development related: Team Treehouse. He said it was a lucrative business once you knew your stuff and that he had several projects that he worked on in the evenings that paid $20 an hour.
"Not bad," I thought to myself. Then he told me that that was the price he used for Churches and non-profit organizations and that a professional web developer could charge upwards of $75 per hour!
Holy Smokes! That can't be right... I did some fact checking... yep... $75 per hour...
I told him that I was indeed interested and thought I could maybe pick it up as a secondary income once I finished my masters degree and the insanity of being a new parent wore off. Months went by and I would check in with my web developer friend for more details every now and again. The prospects sounded better all the time. It paid well, I would get to set my own hours, I could work from home if I needed to, and it was interesting work that would keep my brain engaged. Someday I would do it.
Then I received word that my position with Distance Education was being cut. With a thesis still to finish and no other employment in sight I tried out the free trial at Team Treehouse and ploughed through HTML, CSS, and started into JavaScript. I was able to build a simple church website and had people asking me what I charged within a month. Unfortunately I only knew the very basics and did not feel that my humble abilities were adequate to charge money. There was also the time constraints of my thesis and the unique health challenges posed by our second pregnancy. In the end family needs and thesis prevailed and web development was put on hold.
Half a year later my masters degree is finished, our second child is healthy, and I have recovered enough to take it up again. It's only been a week and I've blasted through the remainder of the Front End Development track on Team Treehouse and completed half of the PHP track. I'm learning lots in leaps and bounds and it is terrifying. Every time I learn something new it feels like I've put another block onto my tower. I've always been really good at building block towers but the taller they are the more wobbily they get and I start to feel like it will all fall apart. Now that I know the basics I'm being introduced to a whole new layer of apps and libraries that I had no idea even existed. Three or four systems I could handle but add to that a dozen extras from UNIX to Composer to Twig and I feel like I'm still at the bottom while also feeling like my tower is too wobbily. But then I look at other websites and know how I could make them myself. I think I'm almost ready to start doing this as a business and I'll keep learning and growing along the way.
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