Challenging myself to learn:

I always valued and enjoyed lifelong learning. But, now I am over 60.  I wonder if I can learn at an older age?  As I age, I feel more like slowing down than “ramping up”.  I am not very confident about learning new skills. And, I am not sure I should take on any big new technology projects, even though it was my plan to do more with my website now that I am semi-retired.

Gaining Confidence:

I took a huge step when I decided not to renew my website maintenance contract (because of the expense).  It was very scary to imagine doing it myself.  I talked to my family and some friends about it, and they seemed to think I could do it. But, I knew I needed lots of support as I learn at this older age.

I chose to switch to GoDaddy webhosting because they take care of some of the maintenance tasks, and they have 24/7 customer service by phone. They seemed very patient and helpful during the transition when  I called many times for many reasons. One of them said he could tell by my voice that I was a “mature” person and he was impressed that I was doing this.  Even though it was like saying he thought I was old, It was nice to hear some positive words during stressful times when problems needed to be solved.

Learning at an older age:

I watched some tutorials and videos, but that didn’t seem to be enough for me.  I looked for an online class to take, but didn’t find what I needed.  Thankfully, I found a book I had called the WordPress: The Missing Manual (2014).  I bought it many years ago but hadn’t read it yet.  I know it is outdated, but it is a great overview so I can understand what WordPress is, how to manage it, and how to maintain it.  And, it gives some step-by-step directions!

Understand Your Individual Ways of Learning:

There is a lot more to learning than you may have realized.  People have different ways of learning.  At any age, it helps if you make a plan to optimize your readiness to learn.  You can read my Ready to Learn handout at https://healthvista.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ReadyToLearnHandout.pdf

I won’t be adding new web pages anytime soon, but I am learning a lot. So far, I have gotten through most of the information about creating and editing blogs. I found out that I didn’t do them exactly correctly in the past. Next, I will start reading about web pages so I can organize things better and improve my health resources website at healthvista.net .

Practicing:

I am writing this post as a “practice session”.  If I read about something without using the information, I usually don’t remember what I read.  My plan is to practice as I go through the book, so I can learn better.  There was another reason for creating this post, I wanted to practice finding and using some free stock pictures that are not copyrighted.  I was glad to find more images for future projects on Freeimages.com, Pixabay, and Unsplash,

Growing toward success:

I know that I am gaining skills and confidence as I challenge myself.  Even if I make mistakes along the way and it takes a lot of time, I will be learning and growing.  Instead of learning less when I am older, maybe retirement is the best time to learn.  Hopefullly, there will be more time to spend learning. And, as I learn at an older age, I have more wisdom to know what help I will need to reach my goals.

Here’s to this one small success!  I am on my way to learning how to maintain my website.  I was able to create a blog post correctly!

Blog post # 19 created 5-24-20 by Mary Knutson and edited 6-9-20

Photos by Piotr Lewandowski and Wynand Van Neikerk from FreeImages,com