So, this has been my summer of post-graduate soul searching… What do I really want to do? While in school I was adamant about not wanting to get stuck doing web stuff after graduation. I wanted to design tangible, holdable things. However, it became clear at school that I had an advantage over most design folks when it came to easily comprehending software and technical issues. And what do I now find myself doing? So far this summer, I have installed Wordpress four times (for myself and others — for fun, heh!) and installed MYSQL on my home machine in order be able to serve and test WordPress locally. I am now researching sendmail on OS X so I can test cgi scripts locally (I want to be able to send formatted email via a web form, for example). I spent 3 solid weeks immersed in PHP, a language I had no familiarity with, and CSS positioning (for which I had only a passing famliarity) creating my identity-based WordPress template for www.abbylarsen.com. Yesterday I spent waaaaay to much time in PHP scripting land… Uh. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about I’ll translate: Geek, Geek, Geek.
Sigh.
In my defense, I have involved myself in a number of artsy, craftsy, hands-on things, too — I’ve taken a marbling class, completed a couple of beading projects, sewn a skirt, and made an illustrative logo of which I am quite proud. I just wish I could figure out which skills would fulfill me most when employed to make a living. Economically, it’s a no brainer. The technical bits of me will always be in higher demand and, correct me if I’m wrong, technical skills are more lucrative (because they are more tangible?) than artistic ones. So, I suppose it is no mystery why I ended up in web design before — it seems the best way to marry the two. But I should also thank Mr. Guy for the sexy new computer. None of this time spent bathing in phosphors would have been as engaging if my computer didn’t KICK ASS. 
Anyhoo, back to my OS X web/mail server setup…
