February 1998. 23 years old in my first “real” job: full-time, permanent, with benefits and my own cubicle. You know that administrative assistant who gets a little over-creative with Word or Publisher? Yup, that was me.
My cube neighbor, a marketing guy just six months older, “did the website” for the office. I was terribly curious about how this web thing worked. He pointed me at some tutorials, and in between my regular work, I started teaching myself, coding in Notepad and hosting on Tripod.
The first thing I remember figuring out on my own: that I could put an <a> tag around an <img> tag. So that graphic I’d exported out of Clip Art of a hand with a pen, it could be a link to a page of my writing.
That still feels like magic. A picture that was also a link.
Which is to say:
- We all start somewhere.
- Don’t forget the magic in tiny things.
