I was introduced to my first blog site through a summer job when I was 13. The job was an office job at a senior citizen center. My first job unknowingly lead to my career of choice.
A coworker of mine who was also a summer worker would always check up on this website, Xanga.com.
He was a big fan of metal music so his page definitely looked the part. However, he wrote about his life and people responded. Friends and strangers would gravitate to his page design and the things he wrote about.
One day, out of curiosity I asked about the site. He said “Xanga is great. You can change the look and feel of the page, blog about anything and talk to friends and strangers.”
My 13 year old interest was peaked. I replied “hey can you meet people from all over the world on there?” For context, it was 2003. Aim messenger was booming so talking to strangers online was the norm.
I signed up and immediately gravitated to the design part of the site. My page was modeled after the video games that I played at the time.
My Xanga experience lead me to exploring web design and development. Luckily, 2 years later, it was brought to my attention that graphic design is a career choice.
I had no idea at the time but I was experimenting with color palettes, HTML, and design. It was a blast. Luckily, my high school web design teacher bought to my attention that this is a career path.
I’ve been in the field ever since.