the perfect job

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I won an award for my personal homepage.

It was a rather glamourous award, presented by Telstra and the Australian Financial Review. It's sitting here on my desk with me now. A big glass bauble thing with gold WWW letters circling the orb. It's also very dusty. Well, it is heavy and it's not as though I ogle it every morning.

To this day, I still wonder how on earth I managed to win it. I mean, my site wasn't anything spectacular (although it was fairly unusual back in 1998). I'm convinced that the judges (of whom there was quite a selection of industry big wigs) picked up on my attempt to create a community feeling, and that was back in the days before 'sense of community' became a byword.

My aim was to create a site that explained the ins and outs of HTML and Web Design in a plain speaking, simple to understand way. At the time, sites with a similar purpose were fairly dry and technical.

To make it seem personal, I created a character and a theme and continued this throughout the site, as though she was always watching, always thinking of the audience. She had a fun attitude and she wasn't afraid to show her mistakes as examples of what not to do.

In a way it's funny, because achieving that award got me into the company I now work for. The short version is that someone who knew someone knew that I was looking for a job, and that someone contacted someone who rang me. As soon as he heard about the award, he said, 'Oh, you're xxxx! I know that site - you're hired!' Now, first off, I thought this guy was a fruitcake; fancy hiring someone over the phone!

And it's funny that the transition has come full circle in a way; I started off writing online to teach people and to share my knowledge and now I do the same thing, but on a larger scale, by developing elearning modules and mentoring others to do the same. I write, I edit, design, and build using XHTML, CSS and Standards. I also do all the graphics and animations (Flash). Best of all, people leave me alone to get it done because they trust me and my skills.

I always feel blessed to be doing what I love to do. I never tire of it even though it's tough sometimes to keep up with this ever-changing industry; there's always so much to read and learn.

It's my perfect job - What's your's?