I started working with WordPress in 2006 when I first discovered it. Back then you couldn’t even set a static home page for your site and it was still targeted as a tool mostly for blogging. Nevertheless I fell in love with the ease of use and the flexiblity of extending it through plugins. After some experience as a frontend engineer, mostly for .NET projects with a small and then a big agency, I ended up coding WordPress projects at the big agency. As I still used WordPress for my own sites and a few side-projects, this was huge for me.
In 2011 I had enough from the big agency grind and decided to start my own business. Back then required was already in the back of my head. After running solo for 1.5 years we finally started required, an agency focussing on WordPress and UX with a heart for open source software and community.
Two years into it I started gardening with friends just for fun. Last year I realised that my motivation to keep a secure job at a growing agency was slowly fading and I took some time off. I realised that building similar sites over and over again wasn’t my thing anymore and as the agency grew, so did the clients and budgets.
This lead to more and more meetings and more politics involved in larger corporations, good for the business, not so good for my mental health. So after taking some time off I told my co-founders that I wouldn’t come back and bet my time on my passion, food gardens. This is a my WordPress story, a story about mental health, pursuing your dreams, building and running an agency and when to follow your heart.