This past year was phenomenal for me; it included a major career pivot from training as a novice monk to coming back home, reinvesting in family, and exploring a long-lived passion for graphic and web design.

It was 2015 when I first began to work in web development, learning how to write HTML and CSS—born from a desire to bring my designs to life. The web felt like a black box full of mystery, with endless creative explorations to be had. Yet, it was also an open educational field, where viewing how a design was built was a click away: View Page Source. As I progressed and started sprinkling sites with interactive components in JavaScript, a language called Ruby came into my radar. At the time it felt so far off; no one I knew of was using it, and I remember even being poked fun at for having an interest with it. And, I didn’t have the confidence to further progress in programming, thinking it was inaccessible for a designer or someone who’s more visually minded versus logically. But, Ruby kept showing up. The community ethos I saw through work with Jekyll and browsing Twitter was attractive, the syntax itself looked fascinating and almost readable—like English, and the language philosophy was grounded on supporting human flourish.

Going Forward

Fast forward to today, the start of the new year, and Ruby’s still calling my name. Though this time, something has clicked. Playing around in IRB feels intuitive and sheer fun. That pristine feeling I got when first starting to make text appear on a site has come back, and I have to ride it! Today, I’m setting out to really learn Ruby—to be a programmer. The resources and community are better than ever: Ruby 4 released, Rails 8 and Rails World, GoRails, and so much more (for another post). And, they’re perfectly aligning with the giddy feeling I have that knows the value of tinkering for fun; human-centric computing; contributing over consuming; and trusting in the capacity to learn new things, regardless of age.

Direction of This Blog

So, today is the start of sharing small, consistent discoveries on my Ruby journey. My hope is that I can become a better writer, document and commit what I’m learning to memory, and inspire someone else to hear what’s calling them and joyfully begin.