The second Karen picks up a pen, she starts to draw. She draws through happy times, through sad times, through boredom.
At age 10, Karen is introduced to HTML in computer class.
Karen teaches herself how to build websites (on GeoCities, may you RIP) using HTML and CSS by age 11.
At age 12, Karen's artistic side kicks and she decides she wants prettier graphics for her website. She teaches herself Adobe Photoshop 6.0, and integrates her work into her website.
Karen gets her website hosted by a kind teenager who owns the domain digital-grl.net (now obsolete), and learns how to use FTP for the first time.
In middle school, Karen experiments more with graphic design and decides she wants to be a graphic designer.
In high school, all of Karen's friends decide they want to major in business for college. The FOMO side of Karen gets the better of her, and she decides to pursue marketing, somewhat of a cross between graphic design and business.
The idea of majoring in business doesn't excite Karen all that much. For her, it's always been about building something out of nothing. Amidst standardized tests, Karen finds solace in baking. She bakes cakes, cookies, and pies every week and brings them to school. She finds it wonderful to be able to throw together a few ingredients, heat the mixture up, and somehow create something that sustains life.
Karen attends UCSD for college. There is no business or marketing major, so she double majors in Economics & Communications, the closest compromise.
By junior year of college, Karen witnesses people enjoying their CS majors, and wonders if she should have taken the other path from the very beginning and chosen coding instead of graphic design. However, in her mind, she was 3/4 done with college and couldn't turn back.
At 22, Karen graduates UCSD and starts her career doing marketing in-house at a healthcare tech company. After half a year, she feels stagnant at her job. She was working in a slow environment, in a slow industry, in a slow city. She yearns for change and a faster paced life.
At 23, to stimulate her mind, Karen starts cooking a lot, and takes an introductory Javascript course on Lynda and a Java class at UCSD Extension. She wants to complete the three-part Java certification but gets sidetracked trying to find a job--any job--to get out of her safe but boring position at work. She decides to move to NYC to join her boyfriend.
Amidst interviewing for marketing jobs in NYC, Karen's now-ex breaks up with her. Confused and sad, Karen contacts her college roommate, a San Francisco native, and asks her what she should do.
"You've always wanted to live in San Francisco. Why don't you move here?"
Within 2 weeks, Karen finds a job at a marketing agency in San Francisco. She moves into a great apartment with her college roommate and old UCSD friends. She loves her friends, her apartment, her boss, her coworkers, and her job. She loves SF.
But what about coding? It's always been there, itching to push past all the things that came in between. What if she had continued coding? What if all the fortunate and unfortunate things that led up to Karen being in SF, the tech hub of the nation, was so she could finally, finally, stop wondering?
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Has this path been a long time coming or is it a quarter life crisis? Or possibly, both? This year, I've decided that I need to stop wondering "what if?" and find out. Hence, my journey to cooking up some code, and more, at age 25.
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