My other site, developed from my love for European pop music, was a fan site dedicated to Swedish pop sensations the A*Teens, formerly Abba*Teens. In the summer of 1999, my sister and I traveled to Sweden to visit relatives, and I was introduced to the Abba tribute band, whose singles “Mamma Mia,” “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” and “Super Trouper” were catchy and upbeat. I figured there would be a small market for such music, as I really enjoyed it. My site, Somewhere in the Crowd, quickly grew to be one of the most popular A*Teens sites on the web, so much so that even the maintainers of the official site noticed and would periodically send me autographed CDs and pictures to use as prizes in site contests. Once again, though, updating became a nuisance, and I dropped it in senior year due to a load of AP courses and tae kwon do training. The A*Teens have since split to allow its members to pursue individual projects – both Dhani Lennevald and Marie Serneholt (who was voted the sexiest woman in Sweden a year or so ago – quite a change from when A*Teens first began in 1998!) have released albums in Sweden since then – but on occasion I do listen to their songs and remember the days when they were my main musical focus.

I never received any compensation for my sites, though in hindsight, HoMM3 Unleashed could have done well with some advertising. I was never in it for the money, however. I made sites because I enjoyed a) the product I was marketing, and b) creating the sites themselves. And I miss it! I miss the enjoyment of putting together a professional-looking site just from typing a bit of text into Notepad, I miss scouring the ‘net for means of attracting visitors, and most of all I miss creating a product that was both useful and enjoyable for people I might never meet, from all around the globe.

I’d like to get back into web design. This would entail, however, re-teaching myself the tricks of HTML as well as learning the languages and technologies that have emerged since my departure from the web scene, including DHTML, Flash, PHP, and so forth. That, and I require a good idea for a site. Obviously this is a long way off, but it’s fun to think about.

At age 10, I wanted to be a pathologist.

At age 13, I wanted to be a surgeon.

At age 16, I wanted to be a web designer.

At age 18, I decided that I would continue taking classes in Spanish and get a degree in International Relations. I also decided that an American college education was not for me; I’ve always been more of the “independent learning” type, rather than a day-to-day, homework every night kind of person. So I shipped myself across the ocean to a little town on the North Sea, St Andrews, and began my mission to turn myself into a State Department ambassador. Four years later, I walked out with a Master’s degree and returned to northern Virginia having decided that I simply was not ready to become a civil servant. My parents, both former Army officers, were rather against this idea, so I temped for six months at various government and government-affiliated agencies, all of which provided me with good office experience but which also strengthened my resolve to make a success of myself in the private sector.

And where better to do that than in New York City? In February of 2006, I moved to North Bergen, New Jersey, just outside of the city, where I could keep my car (and my rent!) without signing away the lives of my first five children. It was at a job fair near the Meadowlands that I met and charmed an executive from a major financial firm, who offered me an interview an hour later and hired me within two weeks. As a financial adviser trainee, I earned what I considered to be an extremely healthy paycheck as I plowed through four-inch study guides in an effort to pass the NASD exams necessary to become a full-fledged financial advisor.

All of this was all well and good, and I passed two of the exams (the Series 7 and the Series 31, for those of you who know the business) and took the life and health insurance course before I realized … wait a minute. First, I don’t want to be a salesperson. I had tried that, briefly, back in Virginia, and disliked every minute of it. And second, I especially don’t want to sell a product that I don’t back 100%. Given the nature of articles I had read about the company, which mentioned that even those high up in the ranks didn’t invest in the company’s funds, it seemed as though this was a wise decision. So, after six months, I made my departure.

Two months, a move, and a stolen car later, I received a call from an HR executive for an enterprise software company. “How would you like to work six miles from your house?” he asked, to which I responded with great enthusiasm, “Would I!” It was the beginning of a beautiful – albeit tumultuous on occasion – relationship with the enterprise software company for which I still work.

In essence, it took five jobs and fifteen months to decide what I wanted to do, but at last I seem to have found it. I’ve become the marketing professional that I never dreamed I’d be, and I get to work with personable, knowledgeable people from whom I’m learning tricks of the trade on a daily basis. Whatever happens here – and you never know with a start-up – this place will serve as a strong foundation to my career. And that’s what this blog is all about.