With God’s help, I’ve
reached a milestone. Five years ago, I
enrolled in a diploma program in web design.
I had hopes and dreams of all the money I was going to be making; no
more demanding, menial jobs for me!
Hmmm. Life has a way of throwing curve balls at us,
and I don’t always manage to hit or dodge them.
About the time I was graduating, I was newly re-married, and my husband had
been laid off (long term). We found
ourselves scrabbling for money – there were most definitely no extra funds to
spend on launching my portfolio site to promote myself. Before making the decision to attend school,
I had scanned local job postings. I found a
wide selection of career opportunities in the design field. However, once my training was complete, the
economy had plummeted. The few jobs I
saw listed in the want ads were too far away from where I live. A couple of people I knew who owned
businesses were interested in having a web site, but by that time, I was
working two part-time jobs, seven days a week.
The last thing I wanted to do when I got home was work some more.
Eventually, Roger got a
good position somewhere else, and I was able to quit one of my jobs. I talked about maybe getting back into web
design, but it’s kind of funny how we often become content in the midst of our
discontent. Life was hard; it was not
fun, but it was comfortable. It was what
I knew. By that time, I realized that I
had forgotten so much of what I had learned anyway. I kind of shrugged it off – oh well, school
was fun, even if I never use any of that stuff again.
A few weeks ago, someone
my daughter Camille knows was looking for a web designer. I began with my excuses – “I have forgotten
so much…”; “I don’t have much time to spend working on it…”. The client insisted that she just wanted
something simple and she didn’t care how long it took. I agreed to give it a try, but I’ll admit that
I almost dreaded the thought. It all
felt so foreign.
But guess what? Once I started working on the project, I
began to catch the fever again. Yes, I
had forgotten a lot. And I do mean a
lot. I pulled out old textbooks and
looked up codes on projects I had done
in school. I searched helpful web
sites. I spent hours at a time trying to
come up with a php code that would send an e-mail form. When this was finally mastered, I experienced
such a sense of jubilee!
Tonight, I finished the
site. The client approved it, although
she mentioned some changes she might like in the future. She also told me that she referred me to
someone else who is starting up a new business.
Wow – things may be looking up!
