The Utter Frustration That is CSS

I'm currently in Seattle, saturating myself with two nights of all things Metallica. I started making a simple little site, with Rocket and hosted on Shuttle, as a way of immortalizing the weekend. I wanted to put up the set lists (I write them down as the songs are played) and display a few photos...maybe a video clip or two.

I've got the site organized with Rocket server, assets, templates...all the bones.

I go to style it.

Once again, I bash my head against CSS. I hate this fuckin' shit...I'm serious, I really, really loathe it. Every time...every single time, I sling code for hours against screen.css, like the Peter Griffin in that gif with the blinds.

I know my loathing is rooted in ignorance. Trust me, I get it. I just don't know what to do or what resource to use to learn it in a way that's effective for me.

I've tried many things, but typically the learning resources approach the topic from a direction that my mind rejects. Yes, properties, selectors, etc. are important to know, but I can't connect in my mind how those building blocks translate to the actual result I want to see on the site.

Videos are useless to me, I have to be in there typing and getting my hands dirty.

The written content approaches the topic from the wrong direction, as I said a moment ago.

What to do?

My typical fallback has been to grudgingly grab Tailwind and use ChatGPT to give me roughly what I want. I don't really want to be using tools like this, I'd rather have some basic level of compentance with CSS.

Right now I just don't know what to do to get anywhere near productive.

I guess my Metallica site will never see the light of day, which makes me sad.