Chixe

I wanted to know everything. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to burn my name in the pages of history.

Talk about the decisions that made you become a scientist. :)

I have long been of the persuasion to help humanity and perform acts of kindness, as best as I can. I do this in a non-euphoric manner, with a humble attitude and with humility, and I am not arrogant regarding what I do. I want to make sure that others retain their dignity, at all costs. I receive a lot of reward and feel a sense of accomplishment through my efforts.

Getting there was easy...through volunteering, interacting within charitable organizations, etc., as I had the motivation and goals,

It's the realization of the difference between what I could be doing, and what I want to be doing. The decision was to drop my major of study, and start the pursuit of another. Have not been looking back since ;)

I'm doing a something that I truly love, but I somehow doubt that I'll be doing this one thing forever. It's not The Thing, if you know what I mean.

But I do enjoy writing and the way I found that out was simply by doing. I wrote essays and I blogged and I read and I loved it. So I did it. And now they pay me. Yay.

Life kept pushing me into the same general area. Even when I tried to walk away from it, I ended up right back there. Like a boomerang lol.

Sometimes people try to narrow things down too much. For example, with me it's helping people...that doesn't mean I'm meant to be a doctor. There are a variety of ways to help people and that keeps it fresh for me.

I was drawing and designing things like baseball cards, sneakers, and home blueprints from a really early age and kept doing that through high school. Around 1996 or so I got into computer programming and Photoshop, and was very interested in math and science while still designing and drawing things. Web design lets me use both of those passions (design and write code: HTML/CSS/PHP/Javascript) so it combines the two fields I'm most interested in. Oh and I'm really interested in sleeping and working from home, and I'm doing that too :)

Initially, as a teeanger and a few years more, I actually had dreams every night about another field entirely. I could actually *see* myself doing that profession. As an extension of that original passion, I volunteered in a public school, a summer program and a store-front counseling center in the very small town I grew up in. It was through those volunteer experiences, I came to understand that original field was not the right one for me.

I think you might be looking at the problem from the wrong angle.

You know the things you love to do.

The question is how to leverage those things so that you can make a living off of them.

When it was time to choose my career at school the career that I wanted to do didn't exist. I knew I wanted to do art and also combine with coding. Back then (here comes me showing my age) web design wasn't a career. As I went through college I wavered between a fair few different options and did several subjects in various degrees. It was only when I left and did photography and writing for a while, that the net was mature enough to be an option and I went back and did a degree in software engineering - taking as many web options as possible as it was still not a big option study wise.

When I look back I always knew what I wanted to do and the paths I took may have seem random but I kept coming back to my current career. I always loved programming and kept it up no matter what I was doing. I knew what I wanted even before the career existed - odd really. I was lucky that although at the start the option wasn't there it came not too late in my life so I could fall into it. I couldn't imagine doing something different - it satisfies both my coding and design needs and also is a career I wake up in the morning looking forward to doing.

Now I appreciate how even one relationship with one adult could have provided me with facts and choices, could have helped me make the decision. I didn't have that -- but it was a different time then. I try now to be that person in a mentor relationship and with teenagers.
Making decisions about my career passions were all about volunteering and because of my own history, I also add that finding someone to tell you about that piece of the world is invaluable.

When I first enrolled in college I had been doing nothing but music for most of grade school (choir, marching band, drum and bugle corps) so I felt it only fitting to enroll in the department of music.

Thing is, when you're sitting in a music theory class, failing with a 53% grade because it's not interesting all while designing a logo for your website you have to step back and wonder "Am I REALLY wanting to be a musician?"

When I looked back @ my entire life I saw that YES I am musically talented but I've been focused on the visual media my ENTIRE life and that's what I lean on when I have nothing else to do. Why else would I stay up until 3am working on illustrations.

So I changed my major to Communication Design with an emphasis in silver smithing.

It was a long and circuitous route. I've lived a "success" to failure to happiness life. From being on top of the world at an early age, I quickly plunged into despair when I realized that, when I had achieved and accomplished and collected everything I had ever hoped for, it wasn't what I wanted at all. After a great deal of soul searching, some wonderful people and huge quantities of introspection led to to my current vocation.

Here's more of my story.