Have you ever wished that you could fulfill your childhood dreams?

Well, I am aiming to work on at least two of mine: writing and coding.

Writing

When I was in elementary school, I used to love writing short stories. They usually started with the usual “Once upon a time” and ended with “happily ever after,” and they were usually less than a page.

The desire continued into my teenage years, when I turned my one-page stories into 10-20 page stories with more of a plot and defined characters. I was fascinated with the medieval time period, so most of my stories took place in that kind of setting with knights and sword fighting.

As an adult, I turned more to non-fiction. I’ve self-published two books and have been blogging for a couple years now. Writing is definitely a mainstay in my life, and I plan to get more serious about my writing this year.

Jeff Goins has posed a 31-day challenge to write 500 words a day. I plan to accept this challenge, but I have to time-shift it a little because of my schedule. Probably do Monday through Friday for six weeks. This should help to improve the consistency on this blog.

Coding

The second childhood dream revolves around coding. Yes, that’s computer programming. Specifically, web development.

I started my coding pursuit before I was 5. I know I was a geek, even back then. I would spend hours on my grandma’s Commodore 64 teaching myself the BASIC programming language. Don’t worry, I spent plenty of time playing with Lego’s, building forts, and running around the neighborhood (but those are for other posts).

As a teenager, I was introduced to the World Wide Web. I don’t remember exactly how fast the connection was back in the mid-90’s, but I remember clicking a link, then go do something for 20 minutes while the page loaded. I’d read a little bit, click another link, and do something else for 20 minutes. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I could build my own website. One of my first was a free site using Geocities. I called it “Do What Jesus Would Do” (a play on the “What Would Jesus Do?”), and I did all the coding myself.

I let the ball drop on websites while I was in Bible college because I didn’t have a good Internet connection and I didn’t have the time to dedicate to it. After college, I started to pick it back up. The Internet had exploded during that time, so I was doing my best to try to catch up. I eventually started taking some college classes to try to speed up the learning process and keep me on track with the latest things.

Last year, I started “Dev By JR, LLC.” I had a couple clients right away and had plans of growing it. I got busy and let it drop. But things have changed, and I’m picking it back up. I’m dusting off my website and working on giving it a new shine.

What about your childhood dreams?