After I graduated from high school, I was slowly reaching a crossroads for what my adult life might look like.

I had my professional pizza making career prematurely derailed when my manager when he "couldn't put me on the schedule anymore due to the length of my hair."

I'd spent close to a year working at a metal powder plat. The work itself was fascinating. I was learning so much about the metal powder production process. I was learning about quality assurance, I was learning rudimentary die setting skills, helping perform press changeovers and I learning how to prioritize competing priorities.

I will always be thankful for the team leads who took an interest in me during that factory job.

Despite learning and growing, there were issues. I was full-time, but I was also part-time. This boiled down to being ineligible for company-sponsored insurance. I'll never forget how the company sold this. "This is an opportunity for you to take a look at us, and for us to take a look at you, allowing us both to determine if this a good long-term fit." Maybe not a big deal for an 18-year-old kid. A much larger consideration for many of my co-workers who were married with kids and needed the job.

I started looking for another job.

I can't remember how or why I applied for a job a Pip Printing. I knew nothing about printing or design. This might have been a strange choice. There had to be people who applied with prior experience. For some reason, Pip took a chance on this random kid who'd never touched a printing press.

I'm so thankful they did.

Pip Printing opened my eyes to design in meaningful ways. I became interested in accurate execution and how important attention to detail was at every step in the process. Cutting corners in one part of the process could lead to an unhappy customer and a job that needed to be reprinted. Lost resources, lost revenue, unhappy bosses and disappointed co-workers. This didn't happen often, but it may have happened a time or two.

I learned to take pride in my execution and my role in the overall process.

This job helped me see a pathway to university, kicking off the weird strange journey that has taken me from Graphics Arts Management major to Journalism major to Newspaper designer and art director to builder of responsive websites to a design system practitioner.

I'm so thankful for everyone who crossed my path at this stage of my life. They might know it, but there are so many people who helped me become something more than a metal kid with an impressive mullet.

I normally call my newspaper design and art direction portion of my career as "my first career."

Circa 2010, what I assume happened was that my boss was looking for ways to help his print-centric design team cross over into a more multi-disciplinary mode. The Boston Globe was was definitely not immune to the shrinking news hole (the number of pages in the paper), constricted resources and staff reductions that were experienced across the entire industry.

There was an opportunity for those who were interested to join a two-week bootcamp to learn rudimentary HTML and CSS. The goal of this bootcamp was to prepare us for making meaningful contributions to the Globe's website. I jumped on the opportunity.

These two-weeks opened me up to an entire, new world.

I began splitting my week between my normal print design projects and on projects for the Globe's site. Often the "digital" projects were boring tasks like creating images for new blogs (remember blogs?) or other random special digital projects. However, there was the occasional project that allowed me to dig in, think about story-telling, figure out how to bend the Globe CMS to my will and create unique special projects.

I then fully transitioned from print, becoming a Senior Designer for Boston.com / Bostonglobe.com. This is when I really began to think deeply about authoring and architecting CSS. For many projects I worked on, it was often unclear whether it would run on the fixed-width boston.com or the responsive bostonglobe.com. I was building everything flexible enough that they could very easily be moved from one site to another; something that happened more often than you might guess.

I began to see an exit ramp from newspapers. Not that I didn't love working for a news organization. I still miss it. It will always be a part of my identity and how I think about myself.

But I knew I needed to "re-invent" myself a little. I was lucky to land at Upstatement. At this point in Upstatement's history, they were doing a lot of responsive redesigns for editorially-focused clients. It was the perfect next move for me.

We've been as lucky as we've been good.

During my interview, I remember one of the founders commenting that 'We've been as lucky as we've been good.' This quote has always stuck with me. In the moment, I thought it was an incredibly insightful take on the early success that Upstatement had as a company. Also, it's a sentiment that truly matches my journey. I've had opportunities and exposure that people much more talented than myself, never get. I'm thankful and proud.

After college, I started my career at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

Fully stepping into adulthood in a city like New Orleans was an interesting experience. I'll be honest, I didn't immediately love the city. Finding common ground was a struggle. It took a couple years.

Two things helped me find my place.

The first was "a dancer" I chatted with one night in my neighborhood bar. She talked about the city like a person, referring to the city as 'she.' Seeing New Orleans as a living relationship, and not a collection of buildings, ramshackle streets and above-ground cemeteries helped me view the city through a different lens.

The other was developing a love of running. The hours I spent running through neighborhoods helped me experience neighborhoods I wouldn't otherwise pass through during my day to day.

Running helped me refine my relationship to discipline. It helped me think through external stressors and find an outlet that helped keep those stressors from taking over my emotional well-being.

I went on to run two full marathons during my six years in New Orleans.

These days I don't run as often as that time of my life, but I'll always have that connection to long distance running. A couple years ago, I strung together a year-plus running streak of running at least one-mile. The streak was in jeopardy when I came down with a slight case of the covid. The smart thing might have been to let the streak lapse. My inner runner would not let me.

In March 2020, I traded an hour-long commute and five days in office for the freedom of working from home and a commute that took 20 seconds on a slow day.

I was living the dream, as they say.

This wasn't my first time working remote. In 2016, we moved from Boston to the Berkshires. As part of the move, I had to outline a thoughtful proposal, outlining how I planned to remain effective as a remote worker.

Writing this proposal forced me to think about focus and productivity as well as the components of my home office setup. At the time, I remember the requirement of scoping out my remote life as a hoop to jump through.

However, the exercise of thinking through these particulars and viewing the ability to work from home as a privilege rather than a right made me more effective and thankful for the opportunity.

I found tools to separate my personal life from my professional life. Each morning I would take a fifteen minute walk to stimulate a morning commute and another walk at 5 p.m. to mark the end of the workday. This simple act helped me compartmentalize the two lives that now shared the same roof.

My prior experience was helpful for the 2020 pivot. I'll be honest, this was not a seamless pivot. The unexpected nature made the shift feel abrupt. Finding focus wasn't instantaneous.

I quickly found my remote groove and re-learned how to appreciate the flexibility of remote work while also maintaining the focus.

In the past six years, my desk has slowly morphed into a tv studio. First I added an external mic. Then an external web cam. Then upgrades for both the mic and the webcam. I traded my stationary desk for an adjustable standing desk. A key light.

Overall, these iterative improvements matches how I approach work. Small progressions of impactful improvements without getting bogged down into perfect.

Early this Spring, I travel to Vienna for a work trip. During the two weeks in Vienna I grew to appreciate the act of going into the office. Granted, walking European streets every morning has its own charm. But the appreciation was greater than this novelty. The ability to roll my chair over to a co-worker and look at their screen is an invaluable benefit of maintaining an in person existence with your teammates.

Eventually, I hope to find a working situation where I can enjoy the flexibility of remote work while also benefit from in person collaboration.