I'm taking a computer course on XML, no-peep: http://www.oreillyschool.com/

It's totally self-directed with a live "tutor" who corrects the quizzes and assignments you complete after you finish a lesson. You get a green smiley face or a red frowny face to tell you if you "passed" or not and then an explanation if you get the frowny face LOL. Because it's self-directed/self-taught it can be frustrating emailing back and forth with the tutor trying to explain where you're stuck and her giving you clues without outright telling you how to do it. But it took me 3 tries to finally get the one right and then the very next one I have gotten stuck on and have "given up" I think. I've worked on it for several hours but don't know where I'm stuck (or I'd get unstuck :-) and my programmer husband says I'm very lost (which he can tell because he sees me randomly trying things instead of "knowing" what to do). Part of it is my fault because I don't pay much attention to things/learn them too well, I look at examples and "copy" them and learn that way. Well, it gets to a point where you're supposed to know principles and how things work and I haven't taken the time/effort to learn as I was going along. So, I'm lost unless I go back several lessons (not easy because the lessons are one place and the files to use another couple places and the assignments still another place so just coordinating a single lesson is hard much less trying to keep track of 3 lessons ago and how it relates to then and now and all inbetween. They have you build on what you've already done so you have several versions of the same/similar file and I've had to "chart" on paper what goes where, etc. :-) I don't think I'm being hard on myself other than I don't think things through, whether I want to do something to completion; I'm a tad impulsive that way :-) But then I end up with lots of plans/half-backed things going on and they just sit there "accusing" me. What makes that worse is I may have lost interest in something but the formal ties have to be broken if that's true (which takes effort on my part) AND I don't have anything pulling me forward, no "reason" to quit or way to trade for something else because I don't have something else.

So I keep the "wreckage" around me to give the illusion that I am going to or "could" pick it up again so it goes on longer and I get feeling more guilty, etc. I have a desktop computer upstairs and I think I don't use it very much, go in that room (my husband's and my office) because that computer has at least two huge projects that I didn't complete (and now cannot) still on it "waiting" for me. Of course there are supporting books and papers and correspondence, etc. for each and, just last month, I finally contacted a website I've been paying $10-$12 a month to for the last 3-4 YEARS that was related to one of them to cancel the payment! Now I'm doing the same thing with this XML course that requires a special website at $9.95 a month while I'm a student, automatically charged to my credt card. Not only do I have a lot of ideas/projects I start but I don't clean up after them so I'm surrounded by "could be" fantasies which add to my sense of vagueness.