The Unplanned Path: Finding Passion in Teaching and CSS

Key Takeaways

hello my friend and friends and welcome to my podcast General musings my name is Kevin and here at my podcast I talk about whatever is front of mine for me in any given week usually in some way that's related to front end development though this week I'll be talking about CSS a bit but uh it's going to be a little bit different I think um but before we even get to that just a little bit of an aside I do want to just mention that I had missed a few weeks of the podcast so thank you for anyone uh who's still sticking around and listening I had a few things happen that made it so I couldn't record and unlike my other content that I tend to batch do well not all my other content my videos that I batch create uh so I'll record like a bunch of videos and then it goes through all the steps in batches generally speaking my podcast is a weekly thing that I do because I enjoy doing it and I just I can't come up with ideas for it uh I I well I guess I could but I like just talking about whatever is front of mine for me in any given week as I say in the introduction so uh it's a fun thing for me to be able to do and I enjoy doing it and so yeah here we are um but yeah thank you for sticking around for those weeks that I had missed uh sorry about that and we're going to keep on going uh the other thing is if you're watching this on YouTube you might be like oh did Kevin get contacts or something no I've just misplaced my glasses and uh that's always a fun thing to do I actually I generally don't I always have them on but uh the last two weeks when I wasn't recording I was barely on my computer at all and that meant I wasn't wearing my glasses very much uh they're getting old now so they're a little bit loose my wife's been I honestly I should have got new glasses like 2 years ago but uh they've been doing fine for me but I guess I I just don't know where I what I did with them uh and I generally don't misplace them or when I do they're usually in like one of three places and now it's been 3 days I have no idea where I put them and it's kind of annoying and my prescription is really low so it's not the end of the world but by the end of the day when I'm on the computer especially it's with like type and everything and again it's a really minor prescription but uh I definitely do notice it by the end of the day that I'm just my eyes are more tired um but I can get through my work so it's not the end of the world uh but yeah just if you're I I there's been a few videos I've done on YouTube where I haven't been wearing my glasses a long time ago too now I I haven't done one in quite a while and people mention in the comments something about how it looks weird or whatever so just in case you are watching that's that's what's going on there and if you're just listening to the audio version of this well uh sorry for the the random tangent and I guess with with that out of the way we move on to this week's topic which uh is something I've been thinking about a little bit lately and originally I was going to be recording this episode about why I like CSS and just cuz that had sort of been front of mine for me and a little bit but with everything that's been going on I was thinking more I don't know I've just been thinking about stuff life in general more so lately uh than I have in a while and it made me realize something is like I've always I guess because people see me as the CSS guy uh I sort of identify that way to a certain extent like what do I do I write CSS I teach people CSS and and help people realize that CSS is awesome it's always about you know that the CSS evangelist all these things that are making people like CSS and that type of thing that's what I see myself as and I guess how I identify these days and I'm so really lucky that that's literally what I do for a job it's kind of weird it's not really a job in a way like here's this vanilla language that just like I'm help I don't know it's weird um but anyway that that it is what it is and I'm very lucky that that is what I do because really enjoy writing CSS if it's if it's not obvious already it's something that I really really like to do uh but as I was thinking about it and why I like it so much I realized something uh and near the end of the sort of bullet points that I drafted for the original version of this one of the things that came up was how teaching it has made it so I'm much I like it a lot more because I understand the language so much more because I had to go into the nitty-gritty and understand it at a very deep level and go through the documentation whether it was MDM or at the actual spec which can be really dry at times and those parts aren't always the most fun but it's my deeper understanding of it has made me really um much more I just I like writing it more and then when new things come I can just know how to use them because I have you know it just Builds on top of the other knowledge I have and everything else and it really made me realized that if I hadn't started teaching I wouldn't have ever not even got to where I am now cuz obviously I wouldn't I would be doing something different but I don't think I would have had this deep appreciation of CSS even though it's always been the favorite part of web development that I have since the very beginning it it was always the part that I wanted to do so it's not that I didn't like CSS or I wouldn't you know I wouldn't be some running off with some JavaScript framework instead and being in love with that I think CSS would always be the part that I enjoyed the most but I don't think I would have liked it as much uh at all if I hadn't started teaching it and it's kind of funny CU like when I was thinking about it I'm like how did I become a teacher like that that's really what I am like strip away the CSS side of things that's what I teach but really I should identify more as a teacher than other things because that's effectively what I'm doing and that actually makes sense as a job like I'm what what do you do I help educate people that anybody can understand what that is and as I started thinking about that I realized that actually I really enjoy teaching people I don't know if I like writing CSS more or if I like teaching people more because it is and maybe it's a bit of an ego thing but like every time you get comments from people saying how you've helped them like that's the most rewarding experience ever and when I get to meet people and they're like oh you've really helped me with like CSS and I like CSS now I get comments on YouTube videos where people are like I used to hate CSS and now it's the favorite thing I do like that for me is like okay that's why I make those are not those videos but the videos that I make is because I see that it's actually making an impact for people and that's like um insanely rewarding and uh I really enjoy it and I enjoyed doing it in the classroom as well when I wasn't just teaching CSS right and when I was in the classroom I was teaching everything from Photoshop to page layout and then occasionally and well not occasionally I did a lot of the web classes but as well as the web stuff and no matter what you're teaching whenever you see something just click and start working better or somebody understands something or is able to do something better like that's so cool to be able to see that progression in somebody and so yeah I really do like teaching and I never really had thought about that in a this way before I don't know why um I've always realized like oh it's so cool and I see those comments and those make me happy but I never like sat back and been like oh I am a teacher and I have been for a long time now it's been 10 years years more than 10 years I think I've been teaching now um but it's also like how did this even happen is you know how did I become a teacher and I I mean it was basically luck like my wife's actually a teacher too she teaches in elementary school but as I was going through this strange weird path where I just kept jumping from one possible career path to another in completely different tangents that had no relation to one another she was just she went to University brought her bachelor's and to be a teacher and now she's a teacher and she's been a teacher ever since she graduated whereas I have several degrees and none of them are what I'm actually doing now in life um the only thing I guess teaching I did end up going to school for it later on but I never got my degree in it uh just I never finished because then I stopped teaching in the classroom to go uh into online teaching and be a YouTuber and all of that fun stuff uh which that YouTuber thing is still weird to me I won't lie either uh for small tangent of like whenever my wife introduces me or something or like people like what do you do I'm very hesitant to say anything about I I'm like I'm an online educator or something like that or I like I teach people that tends to be what I say because I realize people can like relate to that and my my wife is always like he's a YouTuber I'm like oh it's not really what you think but you know it's like as soon as you hear that you think like you know the typical influencer who's like making sensational videos and everything I'm like I just talk about computer code all day long um it's like you know the people get really excited and then they're like oh okay never mind it's not so interesting after all um some people are still interested a lot a lot of the the interest Fades uh quite quickly uh and I I don't really consider myself a YouTube I just see YouTube as the way that I reach them biggest audience possible um but yeah just going backwards now a little bit when I so I was working as a designer for people who don't know I'm not going to do the whole story because I've talked about it so many times um but for people who don't know I was working as a designer for print design stuff doing freelance stuff on the side which is the web stuff I was doing and then out of the blue one of my old teachers reached out to me and said that the school that I had gone to uh which was a vocational school in Montreal uh for design was looking for new teachers they had a lot of new students coming in they needed some new teachers and they thought that I would be good at it and I was like oh really um okay I never thought I would want to do that like teaching something didn't actually sound super appealing but what did sound appealing was the pay uh not that teachers get paid enough but it was better than what I was work getting uh for my full-time job and I was like oh maybe I can do that without having to work nights cuz I had like a one-year-old at the time too or one or twoy old I think uh my oldest was something like that I'm trying to remember he was probably like one and maybe even under one I was just like yes this this would be a good idea for a little bit of more stability and everything and because it was a vocational school you could be hired without a degree in teaching but you were hired as like an industry expert that would come in at an hour rate and you get the work you were getting but if you wanted to actually become like a quote unquote teacher uh who got the benefits of being a teacher so you're you know being in the union and having I think the union thing was always included I'm not sure uh but the pension and the having time to do your work that was actually paid um it was a little bit different from and there was other benefits and everything else that would come a more consistent schedule and and everything else and instead of the whole hourly thing that I was doing uh then you had to start your Bachelor's in education and so on weekends I started doing that and I I I don't remember and so that's why I sort of have a degree in education I did several I don't remember how many credits I ended up getting but I did like half the program probably I think something like that maybe even more than half I don't remember know it's been a while uh but yeah so I sort of have a half a degree in education as well and uh then it sucked doing that though that was I was at the time working full-time as a teacher I had my YouTube channel at that point and I was on weekends going to school it wasn't every weekend I think it was every second weekend and then there was long breaks every now and then um to be able to do that and so anyway it it it worked out in the end um and I'm really happy I did that as well because I learned a lot during those lessons uh it was really interesting actually I learned a ton and a few of the teachers at that school were fantastic and the other thing that was really good about that is the program I was doing wasn't general education it was specifically for vocational education so it was really practical cuz I know when you're doing the more general education stuff my wife has told me all about this that like it's like going to University for anything where a lot of the knowledge you're getting is just you know it's professors teaching stuff like none of the teachers we had were professors they were all people who had been vocational teachers who were now teaching at the University level instead and yeah it was fantastic teachers who actually taught us a lot of things and the program itself was made by these teachers as well like actually by the ones that were teaching it or a few of them and so it was all like this actual practical good information it was a really it was a good course I probably should have finished it but uh anyway I think it I think that helped me I think the experience of all of that plus teaching in the classroom really helped me be a better teacher for what I do now which is the online and everything else um and yeah all of this to say that it's kind of crazy that I never plan to be a teacher I never plan to get into web development and now my two favorite things that I do are teaching and CSS and that's what I get to do but there's one thing with teaching and with just not so much CSS I don't I guess but mostly with the teaching thing is like despite it being the favorite thing that I do like I'm I'm I'm very happy that this is what I do in my life there's boring parts to it too right and I I think this is something that like sometimes people look for the thing they can do that's going to be fun and just or they want to turn their hobby into their job because they think it's going to be fun and it I know there's I think two schools of thought there some people say never turn your hobby into a job because then it becomes a job and then you won't like it anymore and then there's the other people saying well find what you love the most in life and try and do that as a living because then you'll enjoy doing it I've done that and it's worked so far but that doesn't mean that because you took the thing you really enjoy doing and make it into a job and it was definitely my hobby for a while well teaching I don't know there's a weird thing where it was my job and a hobby I guess it was teaching was my job in the CSS was my hobby and then I managed to merge the two of them uh in a way but yeah I I love it and there's definitely parts that I don't like and it's kind of weird cuz my favorite part and my least favorite part are the same thing where it's building demos for things and it just depends is it a demo like I I have two different ways that I make videos sometimes I have a topic that I want to teach and I do the script I make the whole demo and then I or no sorry I don't make I make the outline and then have everything there and then I'm like okay I need a demo to be able to teach all these things I'm talking about and then I have to make some sort of thing and then I record and edit and blah blah blah the other way around is I want to I just have an idea for something and I just make the demo and then I work the outline and the video around that demo that I've already made when I do that second way around where I build the Demo First I'm having fun building whatever it is I'm doing I'm just like oh this looks cool I want to experiment with this I want to play with this this is a new thing or this is just I have an idea or I see something that I want to do and I'm just having fun writing CSS and that's like the best part of something is that I can make content around me just basically nering out or having fun making a demo like that's just so cool so much fun that I can do that and so that's where the demo making part of it is the favorite part of the entire production thing that I do and then then when it's the other way around when it's more of like a formal lesson let's call it it's where making the demos is the part that I dread the most I like outlining things I like doing all of that that might sound weird but like I do like creating like a proper lesson I think that's interesting I learn a lot by doing that like a crazy amount by doing that because I'm often then deep diving into some of those things to make sure I'm correct on things or making sure I understand things like I enjoy that side of things but then I have to make a demo that fits with what I'm trying to teach and then that for me often is like oh okay let's make this thing that I have to do and that's really where it becomes like I have to do this part of it now uh yeah sorry I've gone on like a complete tangent I I wasn't planning to get into this um but it's you you're you're here listening hopefully you're doing something and enjoying this conversation you're driving or doing the dishes or something else and you just like having the noise in the background I guess or doing some work maybe at the same time maybe you're doing that thing you dread like I was just talking about um but yeah that's you know part of life is just finding those things that you know nobody likes doing the dishes in general I'm guessing some people might or like collecting the trash and all those things like those are parts of our lives that we have to do so it happens whether it's life or work or whatever else uh it is um but yeah despite that having the parts that aren't the most fun it's still amazing that this is what I get to do every day um and I'm in a way looking to try and motivate myself now cuz I actually as I'm talking through this I'm like I have a few things or those demos that I need to build right now and I'm like I'm going to record a podcast instead cuz I don't feel like doing that right now and I've been looking for other things to do uh which is why we're here and I had this other idea and I guess it's LED I went from what I wanted to talk about into uh I guess a little bit of self-analysis of why am not actually doing my other work right now uh which this is something that I had to do also uh but I enjoy doing this part of it so uh and it's Al actually another tangent this is going to be a bit of a longer solo Episode by the looks of it uh another tangent of how it's really weird that I'm so used to talking into the camera like this like I am this is I feel like I'm talking to you when I do this uh and when I'm recing YouTube videos I feel like I'm talking to you which is strange cuz I'm looking at a camera lens and it's I guess I've been doing it for 8 years now YouTube videos and the camera lens thing has been a bit shorter than that but say six years of staring into a camera lens has just made it sort of this natural thing where I'm looking there I've even done interviews and now I have like uh I forget what it's called but I have like this teleprompter thing that's also a second monitor so if I'm doing interviews I actually see the person's face like in front of my camera lens which is perfect but I've done tons of interviews where I'm not even looking at the person I'm just staring at the lens and it's supernatural for me and I don't know it's this weird thing or even uh when I'm practicing for conferences or talks and stuff like that and the computer might not even be on but I'm just sitting at my desk computer's usually on and I have my notes somewhere but I'll just like be staring anytime I'm thinking of oh I'm addressing the audience now I'm staring into the lens it's a really weird thing it's and I just thought of it now cuz I'm just staring into a lens but I really do feel like it's a weird one-sided conversation though as I'm saying this this whole idea of like podcasting and anything else or not always cuz sometimes I'm doing interviews but um yeah it's this weird relationship um between people and The Listener and and the speaker in in situations like this where I love podcasts my favorite thing I listen to them all the time and I really do feel like they're personal in this weird way considering it's a one-way conversation and I'm guessing you feel the same way if you're listening to it and you still are like 20 minutes in or whatever we are now but wow we've gone way off topic I'm going to end there before I keep on rambling about other things uh the last thing I do want to say though is just I want to say a really big thank you to you as well because if it wasn't for you and everybody else who is listening and supporting my content and watching my videos and everything else that's going on I wouldn't be able to do these things that I do love uh it's a real just yeah I'm lucky to be here but I I'm lucky to be here uh whenever I say that people are like it's because you're good at it and I realized I I must have a skill at being able to communicate these things or else I wouldn't be here and I've put in work to be able to get here but I know a lot of people who are really good at what they do and they put in lots of work and it just doesn't click for whatever reason um but I'm glad I've been able to make these personal enough connections with people who are following me that they continue to follow me and support me and everything else and I really I wouldn't I literally wouldn't be here doing this today if it wasn't for you and everyone else's support so just thank you very much and of course until next time don't forget to make your corner of the internet just a little bit more awesome [Music]