It is often said that, eventually, we return to our roots. In my case, those roots are in web design and development.

My portfolio provides a good illustration of that journey. It contains numerous projects that reflect my experience with traditional web design and development, and in many respects, these projects became my base camp—the foundation upon which much of my subsequent work was built.

View my portfolio

But the portfolio does not tell the entire story.

Along the way, I also worked with WordPress, something that I am now returning to in a more deliberate way. My work between 2011 and 2015 eventually led to my employment with SAP and also provided a bridge toward further training in Applied Web Development.

A return to WordPress

After moving to Vancouver in 2014, I began working with WordPress. Although WordPress was not part of my formal BCIT training, my previous experience with PHP and MySQL made the transition relatively natural. I learned how to install and manage WordPress, work with themes and templates, and maintain websites.

In 2015, WordPress became part of my professional work.

From March through August, I volunteered at VanCity, where I taught web design and WordPress to individuals with autism. My teaching included basic HTML and CSS, PowerPoint, and WordPress.

Later that year, I worked as a freelancer on various web projects. Some involved converting conventional websites to WordPress 4.3, while others involved repairing existing WordPress websites. Around October, I applied to SAP through the Specialisterne program and was offered a position.

That transition marked the beginning of a long period in which my professional life moved away from client-facing freelance web development. However, the interest in building things, solving technical problems, designing interfaces, and understanding how websites work never disappeared.

The layers beneath the technology

There is another part of my story that is easy to overlook.

Before the web technologies and applications came the interests that gave me reasons to create things in the first place. Music, art, storytelling, and role-playing have all been long-standing interests of mine. Technology became a vehicle through which those interests could be explored and expressed.

Over the years, I experimented with websites and other digital projects that reflected these interests. Some became substantial projects; others remained experiments or ideas. Together, they provided another kind of education—one that came from making things rather than simply studying them.

My formal technical education eventually gave me another layer to build upon. My studies in Web Technologies and Applied Web Development at BCIT provided the technical foundation for much of the work that followed.

In that sense, the different parts of my journey are not really disconnected. They are layers.

Finding the foundation again

Over time, however, I began to accumulate projects and ideas that pulled me in many different directions. Some involved D&D and role-playing games. Others involved game development, older computer games, music, or various experimental projects.

There was nothing wrong with any of these interests. They were—and remain—things that I enjoy.

But I eventually realized that having too many directions can make it difficult to build anything substantial in one of them.

When I began looking more seriously at my next phase, I found myself returning to the foundation on which so much of my technical experience had been built: web design, web development, and the communication of technical knowledge to others.

That realization also changed how I viewed WordPress.

What began for me as a practical tool after moving to Vancouver has become part of a much larger picture. WordPress combines content management with the underlying web technologies I already knew. More recently, AI has introduced another layer of possibilities for creating, modifying, and managing digital content.

My professional work in this area now has a natural home at wpSolutions.ca, while this site—arcolq.com—can remain a place where I document the broader journey that brought me here.

There and back again

Looking back, I do not think the years spent exploring other areas were wasted. They gave me opportunities to experiment, learn, create, and discover what interested me.

At the same time, I have learned that moving outside the box does not mean abandoning the foundation that made the journey possible.

A house can have many rooms, but it still needs a foundation.

For me, that foundation is the combination of web design, development, technology, and teaching that began taking shape many years ago.

I have explored many different paths since then. Some led somewhere unexpected. Some simply came to an end.

And now, in a sense, I have come full circle.

There and back again—and this time, I have a much clearer idea of where I am going.