When I was a kid, I went to a STEM summer camp at Penn State Harrisburg.
I don’t remember every class I took. I don’t remember every person who was there. But I remember making a website.
And I remember that the code for that website came home with me on a floppy disk.
A floppy disk.
There are probably people currently using the internet who have never seen one outside of the save icon.
At the time, I don’t think I understood how strange and wonderful the whole thing was. I was just a kid sitting at a computer, typing things into it and watching something appear that hadn’t existed before.
I had made a place on the internet.
That was cool.
Then life happened.
The internet changed. Computers changed. Floppy disks disappeared into whatever technological graveyard is currently housing AIM away messages, CD binders, and the sound of dial-up internet trying to summon a demon.
And I grew up.
Sort of.
I Never Really Stopped Making Things
Years later, I started a blog.
This blog, actually.
Duct Tape & Depression wasn’t created because I had some brilliant content strategy or dreams of becoming an Influencer™.
I started writing because I was afraid of how easily thoughts could disappear.
Writing gave me somewhere to put them.
And somewhere along the way, that little corner of the internet became an archive of different versions of me.
The things I was struggling with.
The things I thought were funny.
The things that hurt.
The things I was trying to understand.
The things I was absolutely pretending to understand.
For a long time, that was enough.
I wrote things and put them on the internet.
Then apparently my brain decided that wasn’t complicated enough.
Somewhere Along the Way, I Became a Tiny Creative Corporation
I started writing books.
Then I started making oracle cards.
Then tarot cards.
Then there were rune notes.
And tarot notes.
And astrology.
And notebooks for the notes about the other notebooks.
Because obviously.
Then came a planner.
Not just using a planner.
That would be far too reasonable.
I decided I wanted to make one.
A whole year. Monthly pages. Weekly pages. Moon phases. Sabbats. Tarot. Runes. Artwork.
Fifty-two weeks of evidence that at no point did anyone responsible intervene and say, “Maybe just buy one.”
And then recently I started thinking about something else.
What if all these things didn’t have to live separately?
What if the books and the divination notes and the tools and the planner and all the other things bouncing around inside my brain had one place to live?
What if I made a website?
And somewhere in the middle of that thought, a tiny memory came wandering back.
I’ve done this before.
Hello Again, Little STEM-Camp Me
Obviously, what I’m trying to build now is very different from whatever I put on that floppy disk.
Technology has changed.
The internet has changed.
I’ve changed.
But the feeling is weirdly familiar.
What if I make this?
That’s the thought behind almost everything I’ve created lately.
Not:
Am I qualified to do this?
Not:
Will anyone care?
Not even:
Do I actually know how to do this?
Just:
What if I make it?
And then I start.
Usually without having any idea how much work I’ve just created for myself.
Future Me loves when I do that.
Maybe This Is What I Want to Be When I Grow Up
I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of adulthood wondering what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.
There was always supposed to be an answer.
A job title.
A career.
Some moment when I would finally become a Proper Adult™ and announce, “Ah yes. This is the thing. I have figured it out.”
That moment has yet to arrive.
But lately I’ve started wondering whether I’ve been asking the wrong question.
Maybe I don’t need one thing.
Maybe I’m a writer who also likes designing things.
Maybe I’m a reader who takes ridiculous amounts of notes.
Maybe I’m a person fascinated by tarot and runes and stories and technology and why humans make meaning out of any of it.
Maybe I’m someone who gets an idea and immediately turns it into a project approximately seventeen times larger than originally intended.
And maybe all of those things are allowed to exist together.
I’m starting to think they are.
The Floppy Disk Just Got Bigger
I have no idea what happened to that original website.
The floppy disk is long gone.
Whatever groundbreaking content childhood me published to the World Wide Web has presumably been lost to history.
Probably for the best.
But I like knowing she existed.
That somewhere back there was a kid sitting in front of a computer at summer camp, learning that if she typed the right things into a machine, she could make something appear.
She could build something that hadn’t existed before.
All these years later, I’m still doing exactly that.
The tools are different.
The projects are considerably more unhinged.
And thankfully, I no longer have to save everything on a piece of plastic that holds approximately three modern photographs.
But maybe I never stopped being that kid at STEM camp.
The floppy disk just got bigger.
THERE. 😂
And I deliberately wrote this as a real Duct Tape & Depression post, not polished inspirational LinkedIn sludge. It’s got the self-deprecation, the detours, the “how did this become another enormous project?” energy, but there’s actually something underneath it.
Also, I think “Maybe This Is What I Want to Be When I Grow Up” creates a lovely little accidental connection to your recent “I’m Still Figuring Out What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.” They almost become companion pieces.
And we’ve still got six more posts sitting in our queue.
This inservice has made a terrible mistake by giving you free time. 😈
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