Adam McLane

New Skills

A few times a weeks someone will introduce me by saying, “This is Adam, he’s a ____ [Joomla, WordPress, social media, start-up, online marketing, whatever else they think I’m good at, etc.] expert.” That makes me internally snort.

I’m completely self-taught. I don’t know the academically correct way to do just about anything. Poverty is the best trail to competence. All of my skills I owe to having to learn something in order to make something work. [Usually in a pinch] In all the things I’ve taught myself I have really been fortunate to find a friend willing to tutor me as I stumble to learn.

In the past month I’ve made the time to teach myself how to use Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fireworks, and Adobe Dreamweaver. These are “big boy toys” for dreaming, designing, and implementing things in my web world. Between reading online tutorials and begging help from Dave, I’ve been able to increase my competency in these areas. I’m not an expert in using them…. but I can confidently get some small things done.

I don’t think I have a higher aptitude for learning new skills than the average person. But I do think that I have a higher than average willingness to add new things to my repertoire. While I fully recognize God has given me talents in this world… I think that the real talent He gave me was the ability to adapt and excel in new situations.

This is true in a lot of areas of life, isn’t it? There are people who say, “I don’t know but I will figure it out.” And there are people who say, “I don’t know and I don’t want to.“

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Adam McLane

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Comments

4 responses to “New Skills”

  1. Brian Senecal Avatar
    Brian Senecal

    This same thing was one aspect that helped me get my new job….

    Reply
  2. Chris S. Avatar
    Chris S.

    I’ve always been the type that just tried to learn how to do things, from finding and fixing plumbing problems in the house that I moved into, to creating websites and playing with html, php, and css.

    There is a person that bothers me more than the people that “say, ‘I don’t know and I don’t want to.’”

    The person that bothers me the most is the person that say “I can’t.”

    These people have somehow convinced themselves that they are helpless in an area of life and that they need someone else to get it done for them. That bothers me because they are better than that and they just don’t believe it.

    Reply
  3. Uncle Dave Avatar
    Uncle Dave

    hmmm.. see i want to learn other things… but i dont have the focus. I wander like child lost in a supermarket, before they realised they lost there mommy. Like, I know I have the capability to expand my life portfolio but it’s escaping from this bubble is the problem. And for the record, I love teaching you, it’s just you get me at real awkward times.

    Reply
  4. Gman Avatar
    Gman

    Psst where can you get that Pastoring for dummies book btw? LOL. Maybe YS should put out the YP one!

    Reply

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