Proper git usage

I'm trying to use git more because from what I've been able to figure out so far it's a pretty nice way to do revision control, but it is definitely difficult at times to figure out the work flow. I'm using gitweb on a local server to host my repositories so I have access to do anything on client and server, what I've figured out so far is

# create repository on the server
ssh rev
cd /srv/repos/git
mkdir project
cd project/
git init
touch .gitignore
git add .
git commit -a -m "initial commit"
git remote add origin ssh://rev/srv/repos/git/project
git config branch.master.remote origin
git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master
git push --all
# add the project to gitweb
cd /srv/repos/git/public
sudo ln -s /srv/repos/git/project/.git project.git
exit

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That all seems to work fine, although I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I was doing something incorrectly, or at least not using the best method. The next part is where I'm really confused, I would like to be able to clone the repository, create a branch and work with it, merge it back in, and push the changes to the remote branch. I'm trying to do this by

git clone ssh://rev/srv/repos/git/project
cd project
git branch development
git checkout development
touch new-file
git add new-file
git commit -a -m "added new file"
git checkout master
git merge development
git push origin master

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and when I try to push at the end I get the error

Counting objects: 3, done.
Delta compression using up to 6 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (2/2), 246 bytes, done.
Total 2 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: error: refusing to update checked out branch: refs/heads/master
remote: error: By default, updating the current branch in a non-bare repository
remote: error: is denied, because it will make the index and work tree inconsistent
remote: error: with what you pushed, and will require 'git reset --hard' to match
remote: error: the work tree to HEAD.
remote: error:
remote: error: You can set 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to
remote: error: 'ignore' or 'warn' in the remote repository to allow pushing into
remote: error: its current branch; however, this is not recommended unless you
remote: error: arranged to update its work tree to match what you pushed in some
remote: error: other way.
remote: error:
remote: error: To squelch this message and still keep the default behaviour, set
remote: error: 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to 'refuse'.
To ssh://rev/srv/repos/git/test
 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (branch is currently checked out)
error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://rev/srv/repos/git/test'

I have managed to get it to work by creating another remote branch "working" and using

git push origin working

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but I get confused at that point and it doesn't seem like the correct way to do it.

I would really appreciate any help that would give me a good idea of how I should be working with git. Thanks in advance.