I got into the business of website design almost by accident. I was taking a class in “Ethics and Policy Studies” at UNLV in 1994 and, as a class assignment, wrote a paper about the emerging future of the Internet, called <cyberville> and the Spirit of Community: Howard Rheingold, Meet Amatai Etzioni. In the paper I posited that, while Internet communities were certainly a plausible possibility, I didn’t see any future for them.
Who knew?
Despite the fact that the darned paper ended up being published and cited and was even required reading in a class at Harvard, I, the author never really gained the respect I felt I deserved. You see, I was in my 40s at that time and the Young Turks of Vegas cyberspace were barely out of diapers.
During the following decade I made serious cash designing, building, and hosting website for small to medium sized businesses. I started, then sold, an Internet news syndication company, and was among the first in Las Vegas to become an successful Amazon Associate. And, still no respect.
Then, in the late 90s, I decided to take some time off and got my Master’s Degree at the University of Nevada, Reno, doing so in 2005. In journalism.
Today I’m 60 and have continued my entrepreneurial bent, this time in the related areas of website usability, design, Internet Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I have a few clients and expect to gain more.
And still I get no respect from the 20 – 30 year olds. They think I’m a fossil — or worse.
Even though I’m not entirely familiar with WordPress, FaceBook, Twitter, and whatever is predicted to be The Next New Thing, I’ll have to learn — and quickly!
I don’t intend to sit around and watch the world fall into financial ruin. I’ve got a few ideas, see, and I plan to implement them while there’s still time for me to both save the world and become fabulously wealthy at the same time. Think I can’t do it? How old are you, anyway?
In any case, a women I’d just met recently, remarking on my ADHD, happened to mention a t-shirt she’d seen:
ADD – It’s not a Disability; it’s a Superpower!
Until next we meet.
