At 15.

At 15 I was just getting acclimated to a high school life I didn't always understand. Books and tests were not my strongest game. However, put a classic CRT monitor in front of me and any number of programs or games and you had my attention! That friendly sound of AOL successfully landing a good connection and kindly alerting you of a new message was a very magical feeling in those formative years.

As that interest grew deeper over the years I started to dream of what could be accomplished in the future of computing and as the mystic feeling of "online" came more into focus I never dreamed I would have the opportunity to play much of any part in that. I grew up in a family that lived and taught hard work. My father is a man who knows what it truly means to earn a goods day wage and every aspect that comes along with it. And both he and my mom worked to instill that in us boys as best they knew how.

Fast forward almost a decade past 15 and I would be found in my early years of learning design software, the layering elements and teaching myself whatever design principles I could get my hands on. One of those being the early years of lynda.com. Somewhere between intermediate photoshop and illustrator courses I fell more and more in love with what it meant to become a digital designer. I was drawn to it early and often.

It's funny where the road takes us and the all to often closures and detours that lead us to a vantage point we never knew existed. If you had said to me over a decade ago that the courses I was taking online to learn design would first off had even lead to anything remotely close to making a living, I would have laughed in your face. But if you would also have tried to tell me I then be working for said company(lynda.com) I would have just walked right out on you and probably questioned our relationship.

Now even if you had somehow convinced me of those first two things, you certainly would have never been able to get me to even hear you when you said, "oh yeah, and once your in the door at lynda.com then they would be soon owned by LinkedIn only to be followed not long after that by an acquisition by Microsoft. But here I am, working for a thriving and leading online tech company, partnering with the best friends a person could dream of and learning new things in each breath.

Bringing things full circle is always something we love, but seems more and more rare as life gets on in years. When I was a kid I really wanted to make music videos and movies of any kind. It's happened, without any expectation and with a path I could have never planned I'm here.

15 years flew by quicker than I ever imagined. And getting the opportunity to design, which I don't often get a chance to do any more, for a company I believe wholly in was a dream come true. This design was inspired by and made for us all. So stay true to you, and stay right on the edge of learning at every chance you get.

And heed the words of the poet Ferris Bueller, who once said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." 

Cheers.