I always believed that I was creative in only one realm, that realm being music. I have since discovered that I was wrong. Who would have thought that a musician and amateur historian would fall in love with computer programming and web development?

I began working for a very large tech company in 2017 which required learning countless new skills. One of those many skills was learning the basics of computer coding so that I might teach others in a rudimentary fashion. I quickly discovered that I had a knack for solving problems and puzzles with these languages. Not only was I good at it, I was enjoying it! It was the first thing since my days of practicing music for hours on end that caused me to lose track of time while I worked.

After a while, I decided to explore this area further and see what coding could do in the real world. I came across Codecademy.com thanks to my wife, Theresa; she is a brilliant mathematician and wonderful teacher who has had to learn coding for her master’s degree. I worked through the Code Foundations plan, then picked up the Web development plan. The results are below:

There isn’t much to it, I know, but I am thrilled! I haven’t felt this excited in a long time; I built, from scratch, a simple arts & crafts website today! Using nothing but a “spec sheet” given to me by Codecademy.com, which told me what the desired appearance of the page was to be, and one quick Google search for the answer to a question, I went to work. I programmed my own HTML and CSS code into my new text editor from Atom, linked the files together, inserted pictures, and built a simple, attractive little home page within an hour. I never dreamed I would be doing this, and yet here I am. This has been scratching my creative itch like I never thought possible. 

What begins as a collection of symbols, words, and at times what appear to be indecipherable hieroglyphics comes together in a web browser to show the reader the pictures you see above. It is simply miraculous! Creating physical art by hand is not something at which I have ever been skilled, but by using my newfound computer skills, I think I will be making my own type of art.

I am not finished learning; my skills are still in their infancy, and there are coding languages which I have not yet touched. But the fire which I thought only responded to music has again been lit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more work to do!