Where It Started

I've always thought in pictures.

From a young age, I loved creating. Drawing, painting, building things with my hands. Creation wasn't something I picked up along the way. It was part of me from the start. I was a problem solver too, the kind of kid who didn't care how something got done as long as it got done. One of my earliest dreams was to be an inventor.

I was born at the right time. The internet was rising, and I got to grow up alongside it, learning to use it as one of my greatest tools. In high school, I took graphic design all four years and did my senior project on it as a career. I loved the work. I loved that I could make something visual, hand it to someone, and watch them light up.

After graduation, I didn't jump straight into design. I wanted to see what kind of work was actually out there. Honestly, I was young and just wanted to make some money, get a car, and figure life out a little. So I stepped away from the creative stuff and went into the workforce.

In my mid twenties, I went back to school for accounting. My thinking was simple: nobody wants to do their own taxes or run their own books, and if I could take that off someone's plate, I could help them focus on what they actually care about. I've always been drawn to work that helps people chase their own thing.

While I was in school, I took a few extra classes in website design and computer science. That's when it clicked again. Being able to take someone's dream, their business, their vision, and put it out into the world visually? That was the feeling I'd been chasing since I was a kid with a sketchbook.

I've always wanted a career that makes people smile. Not because I need the validation, but because it tells me the work meant something. Helping people has just always been part of who I am.

Right now, I still work at Kennywood. I've been there since about a year after I graduated. People ask me why, and I tell them the truth: I do it for the atmosphere. People are always smiling, always having a good time, and that energy is contagious. It keeps me in a positive headspace for everything else I'm building.

Around the time I was in college, I got closer to a mutual friend, Ryan from OrganicallySEO. He brought me in, showed me how to actually run this kind of business, and taught me things I couldn't have learned from a textbook. I did everything I'd eventually do on my own, but in pieces, learning as I went. That experience gave me the foundation I'm building on now.

I never planned to have hundreds of clients. That was never the goal. I want a handful at a time. People I can actually focus on, projects I can give my full attention to without overextending myself. That way, every client gets the best version of what I can do. Not the burnt out, spread thin version.

I've self taught a lot of what I know, and I'm proud of that. It means I know how to figure things out, and that I'm not going to stop learning anytime soon. I have a lot of ideas for my future, and I'm looking forward to expanding what I can do with code, with design, and with the internet as a whole.

I'm ready to prove that everything happened for a reason. The art, the accounting, Kennywood, Ryan, all of it. It led here.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading my first journal entry. There will be more. I'm just getting started.