I never really had a plan to build a career in digital design or technology. I was just curious about how things worked.
After my first experience with programming, I wanted to explore more. I started looking at websites differently. Instead of just seeing what was on the screen, I wanted to understand what was happening behind it.
How did they build that? How did they get those images to appear exactly where they wanted them? And could I figure out how to do it myself?
So that's what I did.
I started teaching myself, creating images, experimenting with HTML, and building websites just for practice. There was no class to complete, no assignment to turn in, and certainly no career plan behind it.
I just enjoyed doing it.
Of course, not everything worked the first time. Sometimes I'd spend more time figuring out why something wasn't working than actually building it. But that was part of the fun. Every little discovery made me want to learn something else.
Then one day, my son mentioned a job opportunity at Dick's Sporting Goods.
I thought, why not give it a try?
I went for the interview, talked about what I knew, and got the job.
What makes that moment special to me is that everything I'd learned up to that point came from my own curiosity and willingness to figure things out.
Something I'd been doing simply because I enjoyed it had turned into a professional opportunity.
And that was really just the beginning.
Sometimes you don't realize you're building a career. You're just doing something you love, and one day an opportunity comes along.