blogguerz

i thought i was getting set back. turns out i was just finally admitting i needed a better foundation.

i’m gonna say the quiet part out loud: this pitstop was the right move.

not the sexy move. not the “look at me crushing it” move. the right move.

because when i sat down and tried to push through CSS like nothing was wrong, i could feel the proverbial floor begin to give out from underneath me, not in a dramatic “my whole life is collapsing” way — more in a “this foundation is not sturdy enough to keep building upward without eventually eating shit” way.

and instead of doing my usual OCS-ahh hamster-wheel routine, i stopped. i checked in. i paused. i stepped back.

and that changed everything.

going back to CSS basics was not me giving up. it was me refusing to pretend that half-understanding a thing counts as mastering it.

i’d already made progress through freeCodeCamp and The Odin Project, but i could feel the gaps. and if i’m being honest, i was starting to rely on pattern-matching a little too much instead of trusting my own brain to actually understand what the hell i was doing.

so i did the adult thing, which is annoying as fuck, and decided that it’s time for:

not an end; just a fucking pitstop.

i wish i had gone to web.dev sooner, honestly.

but also, honestly? maybe i’m not as “late” as my brain tries to tell me.

maybe the fact that i’m here now means the earlier work wasn’t wasted at all — it was groundwork. rough, incomplete, sometimes confusing groundwork, sure, but groundwork all the same.

and now that i’m slowing down and actually revisiting the basics with intent, the whole thing is clicking in a better way.

it’s less “memorize the moves.”
more “understand the game.”

that feels a hell of a lot more useful.

today was one of those weirdly good days where the structure finally started to do its job.

i actually slept, which already put me in a better headspace. and that’s huge coming from an insomniac. and lemme tell ya, insomnia has not been kind to me as of late, bleh. so it was quite pleasant to sleep the fuck in! my mom even said it was nice to finally hear me snoring, which is somehow both hilarious and weirdly touching. shoutout to her for the emotional support and the very real sleep commentary. 🥲

then i got to work on the first day of the CSS pitstop:

• box model
• handwritten notes (handwriting is getting better, which is nice when it usually looks like chicken scratch)
• started listening to podcasts again. a few podcasts i had on in the background while i studied: Threeedom, Mike & Vittorio’s Guide to Parenting, CSS Podcast.
• robo-tutor time with ChatGPT and Codex in VS Code
• more in-depth box model understanding than i had before

the part that was confusing — and still kinda is — was the relationship between content-box, border-box, width, and border. i think maybe just seeing the words “box”, “content”, and “border” a thousand times inside of a hundred words just jumbled my dyslexic mind a bit, but frankly, is exactly the kind of confusion i wanted to catch instead of powering through it like a dumbass.

because that’s how you end up thinking you “know” and “learned” something when really you just know how to follow instructions until the instructions get mean.

i’m learning that confidence built on shaky understanding is fake confidence.

and i’m also learning that:

• taking a step back is not the same as falling behind
• asking for structure is not weakness
• using ai as a tutor is useful as hell, but only if my own brain shows up first
• pausing is not quitting

that last one matters a lot. all day it’s reminded me of my favorite line from City of God that i always seemed to be the only one to have remembered, “hoods don’t stop; they take breaks.”

the ai tutoring has also mattered, because i don’t want to become someone who can only build if the machine is holding my hand the whole way. i want to be the one who sees the shape of the thing, understands the why, and then uses the tools to sharpen it.

that’s the goal.

today was box model.

tomorrow is selectors.

then the rest of the CSS basics rundown, one day at a fucking time:

• nesting.
• the cascade.
• specificity.
• inheritance.
• colors.
• sizing units.
• layout.
• flexbox.

then on June 22 will be the “onramp” to rejoin the roadmap and get back to flexbox work with a sturdier brain and less bullshit in the way.

and honestly?

i think that’s the real win here.

not that i “stayed on schedule.”
but that i built a better one.

this pitstop didn’t slow me down.

it saved me from driving the car with a loose wheel and pretending the rattling was a personality trait.

and weirdly enough, that feels like progress.

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 • Guerz 🙂‍↕️ feels pleased

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