We are halfway through 2022, and our journey continues! The wheel keeps turning, outward on our infinite path. I am pursuing my road with full force studying JavaScript, managing a nonprofit, and working full time doing marketing for a local real estate company. The lessons are dense, but it truly has been the most rewarding six months of my life.
On June 20th, I graduated from a full stack coding bootcamp at Kingsland University. I got interested in web development after taking a Virtual Reality class at Denison. I started learning HTML & CSS right after I graduated college, but I hit a wall trying to learn JavaScript. Computers are weird. Trying to learn their language on my own wasn’t working, so I signed up for Kingsland’s program. It took me a year to complete, but it was absolutely worth it. I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to learn programming in a setting that worked with me and my needs. The classes were hosted on Zoom in the evenings and weekends, where we started from fundamental concepts and built up to full-stack applications. The knowledge dropped by the teachers makes me excited to continue developing my skills.
In my previous blog post titled “Community Organizing & Taking Action,” I mentioned working with the Newark Think Tank on Poverty, a grassroots organization in Licking County bringing people together and educating about systemic change. The organization has done some major upgrading since last year! We are now a 501c3 with a website at www.thinktanksonpoverty.org. We are also launching a survey campaign in two counties this summer. The campaign is called the Local Progress Report and gives overlooked community members a voice through data. It’s too often that decisions are made without consulting with community members that are struggling the most. This is a crucial misstep when allocating resources and funds with the intent of improving the quality of life for the most vulnerable. How do you know how to best serve your constituency without asking them about the challenges they are facing? This is the purpose of the survey.
Something I may not have mentioned yet on my blog is my full-time occupation. In September of last year, I accepted a position as Marketing Coordinator at e-Merge Real Estate. I had worked with them on a few video editing projects and they invited me to come on full-time. My first 9-5 has been such a blessing. I’ve written before about how much I value routine in my life, working with e-Merge has been significant in realizing this. The combination of daily rhythm, working with others, and being in a business environment fuels me. My tasks everyday vary from graphic design, video editing, web optimization, to IT help. It’s awesome to exercise my skills in different ways and work towards a deeper understanding of how marketing works!
With everything on my plate and all of the plates I am spinning, sometimes I feel like a magical octopus in a sea of entrepreneurial spirits working to make this world a brighter place. I know deep in my heart that all of these efforts are intertwined and my path stitches them together. There really is no place I would rather be than on this journey!
