The end is approaching

It’s almost over, this grand year of 2011. I went from zero jobs to two. Life has be incred­ible busy, evid­enced by the fact that I haven’t updated this since it was 120 degrees out­side. Now it’s a mere 45, and still wait­ing for the first snow.

My Joomla skills have blos­somed, as the new Xpose Fit­ness web­site is about to launch. What star­ted out as a pro-​bono gift web­site for a com­pany that I love has morphed into a glam­or­ously paid gig because the recip­i­ent was so excited and grate­ful. Life is pretty good. There will be another new Joomla pro­ject com­ing this year, but it’s top-​secret.

I only wish I had more time and oppor­tun­ity to make fab­ulous web­sites. As it is, I had to turn away a cli­ent of mine from my freel­an­cing days because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. I hope their pro­ject turned out ok.

Cod­ing

It might sound a little strange, but I can’t wait to have a few hours to sit and work out some new CSS-​based design. At work, I eat my lunch at my desk so I can work on some code. After my daugh­ter goes to bed, I sit on the couch next to my hus­band and code. I have to force myself to go to bed at night when I’m in the middle of a new web­site. It appeals to both sides of my brain. It’s like put­ting a puzzle together upside down and flip­ping it over to see the beau­ti­ful pic­ture underneath.

And now that I’ve got Joomla! down, I spend time brows­ing the exten­sion dir­ect­ory and expar­i­ment­ing with CRMs, store fronts, and ran­dom wid­gets that do cool things. It’s my thing now. I feel like I’ve transitioned from print designer to web designer. By day, I work with print. By night, I cre­ate robust, full-​featured web­sites for fun.

Also, I’m set­tling into my per­sonal style! It’s all very satisfying.

You guys…

It’s 121 degrees out­side with the heat index. 108 without it. And I have to walk out­side and drive 30 miles home in a few minutes.