My problem is pretty straightforward. To weight paint my character I must 1) Select the armature and put it in pose mode 2) Select mesh and put it in weight painting mode For some reason after I put my armature in pose mode I can no longer select the mesh. I attempted to put my mesh in weight paint mode first, but then I could not select the bones. I used automatic weighting to see if the armature would deform, and it does so there is no problem there. Just the auto weights are horrible for this character.
I am using version 2.8 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RnFKtQMpJs4CX91MXeYArBxmO-Zcu5zg And there is the shareable link. You will see I have a character and an armature.