I started wanting to be an architect. Things were heading in that direction until life decided it had other plans. Those plans had me proudly serving my country in the Navy, writing nuclear-reactor operating manuals as a civilian embedding me in a career of web design and sharing it all with the one person I love before showing me my true passion.—Art. That wandering path with all it's experiences, hard fought wisdom, heart aches and love is where the inspiration to create comes from. Its not the traditional path for an artist but I would not change a thing and I'm forever grateful I can call it mine.
In college, I studied fine art while chasing architecture. My dad was a commercial contractor who built apartment communities, and the best treats he would bring home form work to give me were blueprints. I would pore over them for hours, trying to decode their language and make sense if them. Today, it makes me smile to remember the smell of fresh ink and mud that had infused each sheet. I would then draft my own trying to make them more elaborate than the originals with the goal being my dad's reaction proudly saying. "Wow, boy. Son your going to make a great architect someday." I just knew that "talent" paired with the love of art my mom’s carefully incubated in me, I was certain I was meant to be an architect.
But two inevitabilities changed my fate.
The first was the Gulf War. Like many young people trying to make sense of the world, I pivoted. I joined the Navy and trained as a nuclear engineer.
The second was math.
I’ve always been taught that you shouldn’t say you hate anything—better to say you dislike it than to out right say you hate it. Fair, but I HATE MATH—and the feeling is mutual. I remain amazed I made it through the Navy’s prestigious nuclear power school because of it. The power of rote memory. That distaste for numbers might have ended my architectural ambitions, but it also opened a door I hadn’t seen coming.
While serving, I dabbled in drawing from time to time. But life aboard a nuclear-powered warship is no artist’s studio. There was no room—physically or emotionally—for brushes or canvases. And yet, even in that high-stakes, steel-and-grease world, creativity found a way through. A few of my early pieces were shown in Tidewater coffee shops and bookstores—small sparks against the machinery of duty.
Still, the brush mostly stayed dry.
When I left the Navy, I didn’t go straight back to painting. Instead, I took a civilian role at Newport News Shipbuilding, writing technical manuals for nuclear reactors on carriers. The work was logical, detailed, and purposeful—but it wasn’t soulful.
When that program lost funding, I found myself at an unusual intersection: technical knowledge in one hand, an artistic background in the other, and an unshakable urge to make things better. That’s when I discovered user experience design.
UX felt like a strange gift—half blueprint, half empathy. For the first time, I was using both sides of my brain again. And even though I was working with pixels instead of paint, something in me began to stir.
I wasn’t painting yet, but the urge was waking up.
Next in the series: The Return — how personal loss and quiet moments brought me back to the canvas.