Years ago I created a course on WordPress. The course was comprehensive and very educational… for about 2 months. Then WordPress did a major update. So many of the carefully followed steps were suddenly completely different, the few images were no long true. And I felt a bit of defeat, but at least I had some clients. But each time I changed course a bit in hopes of building clients, I have a momentary surge and then things go back to struggling.
Then years passed, and I felt inspired to start doing course work again. A name came to me with fire and light, this must be sign this is the right thing to do. And my friends supported my decision, so I started working like crazy on a security course.
Times had changed. Security now was a major concern for my clients and of people asking me about WordPress. After outlining the course, much of it involving a Better WP Security plugin, the plugin was bought by iThemes. This didn’t seem like a big deal… until a week in, a couple of previous clients called… they were locked out of their sites. Then 1 of my current 3.
I changed the settings. I explained the situation. The past clients and present one understood… but were soon locked out again. Then while working on my own website I was locked out. Life was busy, the course pushed to the back burner while I constantly chased this ghost in the machine locking clients and me out of sites.
I didn’t charge past clients, although I probably should have, and I removed it from the clients repeatedly locked out and when things didn’t change on my own website after a month, I removed it from my own website.
But that’s okay I said as things slowed. Because I could teach other things. People had asked me questions about modifying themes that were easy fixes for me. I’ve done those things before, and now I’d just need to note how I did them so I could teach them how to do them.
WordPress themes which were a simple almost mathematical formula of pages and CSS were now “frameworks” which was great because the themes are smaller and yet more able to be responsive and handle different devices…
The code to change the width instead of being either one or two lines and maybe an change of background image was now several lines in various spots, with some code changes in other places as well. The simply copy category file and add the category slug to the name of the file and change the insert header background code was now a major ordeal. It would require programming from the ground up rather than a single page. True there were still themes out there with category pages, and easy to change width, but these themes are on their way out. The ability to create a child and make these modifications on it… was not going to work.
Weeks passed, I wasn’t certain what to do, I had lost a couple clients (one for regularly being late on payments) and the strain and stress started causing stomach problems and increased my migraines. But these migraines were bad, taking me down for 8 to 18 hours, far less than some people’s but these would blow a whole day that I needed to work.
And while on vacation I was working on another client’s site, changing the background. The code was completely different than other themes… and I was suddenly mad.
How can I teach you something that is different on each theme? Even where it is regular, it’s changing and so what was good last week is no longer relevant this …
and I felt irrelevant.
As Meredith Eisenberg of Paycheck to Passion pointed out, I both like and need to work with a team. It’s what I enjoyed most about Jamberry Nail Wraps that I joined a few months ago… that like so many of my other decisions had a surge. It’s what I enjoyed most about working at StomperNet and what I enjoy about working with DecisiveMinds.
It’s working with others, working towards success and helping others to succeed. I love to train people who want to advance their skills, and work with people.
But what do from here forth will be different than what I had planned.
It won’t be the advanced stuff. It will be more basic stuff, things that don’t change as often. But like I said… it won’t be the advanced coding that I had planned before. Also more stuff will not be done by me personally, I’ll go through and make improvements but it needs to be done, but I need to create more volume and need to build a team… I want to be able to take off for family things… (and sadly migraines that just take me down)
I don’t know what’s about to happen next, but I’ve had to take a break from this blog, from a lot of things to think about my next steps in life… because I need to make some major changes.
And my blog is also about lessons…
- If you are feeling irrelevant, you aren’t… but something in your life does need to change.
- If you aren’t where you want or need to be, then it’s time for you to make changes.
- Remember this is your needs, not others. I need to build a team so I can take off time when I get migraines.
- I want a team to allow me to spend time with my family, and build the team to allow them to take off with theirs.
- Sometimes it means you need to take a break to see the bigger picture, or decide which is direction is better.
- It’s ok to say, I don’t know where I’m headed, but I can take this step… and wait and see where the path leads
- You are wonderful and amazing, but please don’t hide your gifts in the sand of doing the same things because they are safe.
