A few weeks ago I posted some links

to some very old blog entries, and amongst those old entries was one about finding Joe Maller‘s site.

When I first found his site back in August of 1998 I was going through a sort of design/creativity binge. I was seriously considering enrolling at Art Center in Pasadena, and realized that he had gone there. He immediately became a target for me, and luckily he put up with my intensity of questions at the time.

Joe, reading my most recent entry about himself, dug up all of the emails we had sent back and forth at the time, and has posted them on his site.

What I find interesting while reading them is how intense I am in getting some “answers” about Art Center and web design in general. So intense that, without a first response, I email him again. I’d be annoyed with me. I’m grateful that he was patient, because I did end up going to Art Center, and loving it, even if I wasn’t fully enrolled.

It’s wierd to think back to that time when I was so fixated on breaking into web design and ColdFusion programming. I still have some of that same fixation, but I haven’t stopped, until now, and looked back at where I’ve been. It’s been a truly incredible path, having started a very successful dot com in the middle of planning my wedding to Carrie, written a book on the very thing I found so very difficult at first, developed lasting friendships with people, with countless mini and major successes tossed in. In retrospect, the unending failures and disasters are fading, while the intensity to succeed is now being metered with experience.

Thanks to Joe for taking the time to chat with me back in ’98. It made a lasting impression.