Ohhhhh my brain hurts.  Actually it doesn’t hurt but I think I can safely say my brain made some serious new highways along those axons and dendrites.  I’m sure there were several misfires off the ends of my axon terminals during the many hours I spent trying to figure out how to categorize recipes and create a custom menu for a blogroll on my blog site.  Geesh!  I now have a very real example to use with my students that demonstrates that our brains really can change their connections and behaviour in response to new information, i.e. neuroplasticity. Today I am living proof that old brains can  be rewired when we learn a new skill.

I started checking websites, utube videos and tutorials as well as consulting hard copy guides for plug-ins this morning. My goal was to install a plug in on my blog page that would automatically categorize recipes for me.  In addition,  I wanted a template installed that would take ordinary text recipes and format them into a printable recipe page or card.  By 2:00pm I was frustrated.  I attempted to install a plug-in that I thought would be suitable but to no avail.  I could not make the thing work.  After a quick break I got back to it and by 2:30pm I felt slightly triumphant.  Not because I figured out how to use the plug-in but rather because I figured out that I had wasted several hours trying to install an item that will not work with the blog host I am using.  What a twit!

Remember that “let me just try it” method I was using?  Ya well, I never said it was efficient but it did eventually work. What I mean is it worked to help me discover that what I was attempting to do would not work. Not being a quitter, (my mother did not respect quitters) I tackled the Dashboard again after dinner.  Strangely enough, what I had been attempting before dinner and was getting stumped with seemed like a breeze as I worked on it after dinner.  Funny what a little nutrition will do for a brain, not to mention those new neural highways I formed.  I guess I could use the analogy, that earlier in this process I was creating gravel roads but after going over them many times and repeating the same steps, correcting and adjusting where necessary, the roads finally became paved.

So it is with much pleasure and relief that I now have a Recipe page that has a drop down menu and categories as well as a Blog Roll that takes visitors to blogs or websites that I like to follow or visit.  I have posted a couple of recipes as well and I will continue to do so over the next few days. My next technical project to tackle is how to link a mention of a recipe in a blog post to a recipe that will show up in the Recipe tab.  Here we go with the road construction again!  Wish me luck!

You can get a quick five minute lesson by going to youtube and typing in neuroplasticity.  Watch the video by nlosin.