For a while now I have felt stuck. I put in the hours, I go through the tutorials, I read the docs, and then I sit down to actually apply something and only about half of it is there. The rest is gone. I freeze, or I look it up again, or I quietly copy something I wrote two weeks ago without fully understanding why it worked.
It is a bad feeling. It is also, as far as I can tell, completely normal, and the only way through it is to keep building.
Going Back to the Fundamentals
I slowed down and went back to core concepts, mostly frontend and React. Instead of moving through material at the pace the video sets, I started stopping to figure out how things actually work underneath. Hooks especially. They are easy to use and easy to misuse, and the difference between those two only shows up later.
Small Projects, On Purpose
To get the reps in, I built two small things:
- A result summary page, a UI-focused component for practicing layout, responsiveness, and component structure.
- A news website landing page, a full page to test HTML, CSS, and responsiveness while keeping accessibility in mind.
Neither is impressive. Both did the job. They reminded me that practice beats watching, every time.
Zcrum
The bigger one is a Jira clone I am calling Zcrum.
Not a to-do app, not another CRUD project. A full-scale clone, which means:
- Complex frontend UI logic and state handling in React
- Real use of hooks and component composition
- Next.js for server-side rendering
- PostgreSQL, Neon, and Prisma on the data side
I have finished the landing page. The rest is going to be long and probably overwhelming in places, which is the point.
I built InvoicePedia just before this, and the thing that project taught me is that the parts I remember are the parts that broke. Nothing sticks from a tutorial the way a bug at 1am does.
Where That Leaves Me
I still forget things. I still open a file and feel unsure. What has changed is that I no longer read that as evidence I am not cut out for this. It is just what the middle of learning something feels like.
Zcrum is not just a clone. It is me showing up on a project big enough to expose what I do not know yet.