My Skills
As a lifelong learner and self taught designer, I’ve spent pretty much my entire adult life learning through self-study courses (both online and offline), design textbooks, and various workshops. As a result, my business has evolved over the years as I’ve mastered new skills.
When I left my job as a homecare nurse and started off on my journey to be my own boss back in 2007, I actually started as a photographer. Working to brand my own business, create marketing materials that converted and build my own website showed me that I had a natural talent for graphic design and opened my eyes to the fact that I was in the wrong field. I was not a photographer but a designer instead. I fell in love with the design side of my photography business and started my years long journey towards being a professional designer not long after I picked up my camera professionally.
Fast forward to 2014 and, after nearly seven years of schooling myself on all things graphic and web design, I finally felt that I had learned enough to hang out my designer shingle and take down the photographer one. I’ve spent the years since then working in the field and further honing my skills.
Near the end of 2019, feeling as though I had plateaued and gotten comfortable with my skills, I began making the move from simply designing websites to developing them from scratch. This meant I needed to learn how to code - which is easier said than done! For me, learning to write code means learning a whole new way to think about things. My brain just isn't naturally wired to be good with programming logic. I believe you can learn anything you want if you try hard and don't give up though so I'm hanging in there and things are starting to come naturally thanks to all of that hard work.
Today I am well on my way to achieving the new title of web developer as I make my way through code courses and am already fluent in a couple of coding languages with a couple more in the works. My new coding skills allow me to design faster and better than I've ever been able to before and I've been loving applying these new skills to websites I develop for clients and even my own website!
