It’ll all started for my love of anime. No, seriously. I was the girl that would race home after getting off the school bus to catch the newest episode of Sailor Moon. I’d also stay up until midnight to re-watch some of those missed episodes of Goku powering up in Dragonball Z. One show in particular, Zoids, really caught my interest. I mean, ANIMAL mechs battling each other? Yes please! I absolutely loved the idea. So much that I took to the interwebs to find something related in a game.

Now, in 2003-2004 (I was about 15 or 16) the internet was still becoming a mainstream thing so there wasn’t much to find other than a terrible looking Angelfire hosted basic text RPG called “Leena’s Zoid RPG”. Well, I immediately signed up for that! I gave her my character info and fanfic and she created a page just for me! I was role playing on her website and forums for about a week and was so in love with it, I could unleash my creativity while battling in a sweet wolf mech. Unfortunately, Leena decided to call it quits. It was too much for her to maintain and she wanted to move on. I was devastated because her RPG was the only one in existence then and I was a part of it for a very short time.

Determined to keep what I had going with some of the friends I had made online, I decided, without any knowledge of web languages to make my own website. Using what Leena had created, I started there as a skeleton, which wasn’t much because it was default on what Angelfire gave you. I was incredibly diligent in finding resources in how-tos on w3 schools, random tutorials, and html references. This was probably right before YouTube was created so Google was the BFF.

Through my relentlessness to learn, create, and keep a game alive. I created my first website and maintained it for about 2 years. I also taught myself how to use Photoshop so I could create my own graphics. Member size varied, sometimes 30, but lots of players would move on. I had a good core group of players that stuck with me til the end. And of course, it had to end. I was graduating high school and getting older. Interests changed and I moved on but could never forget that unforgettable part of my life.

BTW if you’re interested, you can still visit the 2004 table/CSS2 website that’s hosted on Angelfire lol: http://www.angelfire.com/biz7/rainsdragons_zoids3/homey.html —I sure had a lot of imagination as a teenager, and still do.

Instead, I started work in the food industry. I moved away, moved back, learned some hard lessons in life and then decided it was time to go to the big school, college. At the time, my love of anime was still thriving but it had expanded further into Japanese culture, cuisine, and of course: language (see a trend?). I started slow at a local community college in their Japanese Language program. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I'd figure that out later because I got learn Japanese which was pretty cool!

I took on a side project and created a new website for their Japanese language club because they were using some sort of terrible outdated Yahoo forum...ew. The club used it for a while but when we graduated, there wasn't any one to maintain it, so I think they fell back onto email and that awful Yahoo forum. If you want, you can lol at what I setup for the club (Definitely not mobile responsive) here's the link: http://japaneselangclub.angelfire.com/index.html (Haha, Angelfire again...)

After I graduated community college, I transferred to a university to finish my Bachelor's degree. College life was full of World of Warcraft, cosplay adventures, and lots and lots of reading/cramming the night before tests. As graduation approached, the ever lingering question of "What am I going to do with my life?" sprung its obnoxious head. Not knowing what else I could do with a "Asia Studies: Japan Focus" degree...I applied and was offered a job as a English teacher in Japan.

The next year was set, except before it had even started, I had major doubts. I had come to know so much about the culture and country that I fell in love with, that I knew I wasn't going to be able to survive alone with the ups and downs of being in a foreign country. So, I declined the offer and moved back home and that was that.

Not my finest moments but we all have to walk our own journey to find where it leads to. I was a barista in about eight different companies. I got really good at it and most of the time, it was enjoyable. I can definitely still make a sweet mean latte with a heart on it. Yep, a heart, or even a jack-o-lantern during Halloween. Latte skills for the win. 👍

I do have to say that I have the food industry to thank for opening me up from being deeply introverted to mostly introverted but can now socialize without panicking. But, that doesn't mean I'm not going to stress for a day or two thinking about a social event I need to attend but I digress...

After college, I was in a time of limbo. "Finding myself" through friends, work I didn't have to take home with me, concerts, video games, meeting a lot of new faces. I still had no idea what I was going to for a career. I certainly knew I couldn't wait tables or make coffee longer term and soon, the food industry started to become a mundane boring reptitive job for a means to survive.

I wanted more in life, I didn't want to rot in a cafe barely surviving financially. I needed more, more stimulation for my mind. I tried for one management position but wasn't chosen in the end. The company I had worked for was very small and limited in growth.

I knew I needed out, where or what I wanted to do, I didn't know. I had a plan to start applying to any other jobs outside of food service just to start getting some experience elsewhere. It wasn't until one day, one of my regular customers, who happened to be a software developer, mentioned a code school he knew of. In our previous conversations, I had brought up that I always loved web design and coding, which brought about his suggestion.

Now that it had been several years later, I had grown as a person, and technology had grown so much that I was ecstatic at the thought. I immediately looked up his suggested school and researched their cirriculum, read their reviews then decided. This code school was my next stop.

This code school required 40 hours a week, five days a week and eight hours a day. The first thing we did was code, and the last we did was code. What was different with this code school, was they used paired programming. Every morning we'd pair up on the fly with a different class mate to tackle the project of the day. Every Friday was a code evaluation to see that we had learned the lessons of the week. They gave us the whole day to make a project of our own. by ourselves, so long as it followed the principles they taught.

This was easily the most difficult, stressful, and rewarding time of my life. Javascript was the worst language to grasp in just the basics. I struggled pretty well with it, but it gave me more drive to tackle it and learn and understand how it worked. I also figured out that no matter what solution you find, someone else has done it differently.

Six months of code school flew by in an instant and the amount of knowledge I came out of it felt like twice as much as when I graduated college. Luckily, the program also included a non paid internship so that us beginners could get some hands on experience before being released into the wild tech world.

My internship was with a small start up company, literally 2 people and a hired intern from the same code school as us. They gave us a neat little project to create from scratch by ourselves and provided us with a ton of guidance and insights into the tech world.

It wasn't long after we finished that I was offered my first tech job as a contractor with Wacom to work on their CMS and website. Every day brought something new and challenging, which is why I love developing. The very same person who suggested the code school told me that developing is a lot like a rubber band ball. It starts off small, but then you just keep gaining more and more. There is never shortage of rubber bands to add on to that ball. It was then I knew that this was the career I was meant to be in from the start.

Soon, I was offered a full time position as a front end developer. I look at the challenges of developing with excitement and determination to take them on. I learn something new every day, and live my dream that I worked so hard to get to. I often look back on how I got to where I am, and even though it's not a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or developing since I was age 16 into a corporate job...I wouldn't change the path that I took to get here for anything. It made me into the person I am today.

Again, thank you for taking the time to read!