The little things that (probably) got me here

Last night I stayed up talking to my partner about how, when I was young, I spent endless hours playing with tools like Word Art and other software of the sort.

I remember my auntie (the only member of the family that had a computer back then) had a CD-ROM with software that would allow me to play with typography. I loved to visit her, hide in the computer room and make words look like other things. For example, a fish. I loved to write my name in the shape of a fish.

It was something like this but with my name on it.

By the time I finished telling Daniel (my partner) about my childhood passions he was already snoring, so I stayed up wondering how many of the little things that surround us when we’re young, can shape our future careers.

Here are all the ones that I think got me where I am today:

• My first boyfriend gifted me a copy of Photoshop 1 (back in 1990): I was only 14 when I met him on a mIRC chat channel called “Flashboy” (from a Suede song). He was older than me and already had a side job as a graphic designer. I was really interested in all those things he was doing, so one time we met he gave me a copy of Photoshop 1. I played with the software and got relatively good at it. So much so that a local shop and bar even asked me to do some small design commissions.
  Years later I studied Graphic Design.
• My neighbour studied Fine Arts: When I was bored at home it was common for me to sneak into my neighbour's house through the washing machine room. Cristina, one of the three daughters, was studying Fine Arts in Sevilla. I remember being fascinated by all the drawings she would do in class and then later show me.
  Some years later I got into art studies.
• I adored my brother and I wanted to be like him: And because he was a music lover (like my dad), I used to listen to everything he would listen to. I was into indie, brit-pop, and electronic music a bit later. With the music came the album artwork.
  Because he wouldn’t let me play his albums, I had to make copies of all the ones I liked. I made copies of the CDs but they had no cover, so I’d try to recreate the band logo and typography with my set of felt markers. This became more advanced when I started to create my own mixed albums and design the covers myself.
  Years later I worked as a graphic designer. Not in the music industry but in a publishing house.
• My father was (is) a freak for organisation, tidiness and alignment: He was in the military for a few years, so he developed a bunch of quirks. His desk would be extremely tidy and neat, and the items perfectly aligned with each other. To the extreme that, for instance, if I grabbed the Sellotape and put it back a millimetre out of place, I would be in trouble.
  I wanted him to love me, so I started to do things that he would be proud of. So I created my own organisation system for all my albums. The system consisted of alphanumeric codes referring to the band name, and the album’s order of release.
  I got so much into organising things that I spent Sunday evenings categorising my mom’s button collection (she was a tailor).
  Now, working as DesignOps, I can use this side of me for the greater good.
  As my colleague from Ops said last week:

…And I could continue writing for a few hours. I won’t, though.

Reflecting on these things got me thinking about the arbitrariness of life. What if my neighbour Cristina had studied Biology? What if my first boyfriend had gotten me a copy of a philosophy book? What if my auntie had a math game on that CD-ROM? What if my father was chaos?

The significance that I used to give to these moments is diluting. Isn’t it all completely random?

I just remembered I read a quote on this topic recently. Let me share it with you:

“The majority of what exists is arbitrary, the result of muddle and happenstance”
- Alain De Botton. On Confidence. Published by The School of Life