Launching a Portfolio Site

Welcome to my portfolio site! It’s been a journey getting this together. Late nights and long days staring at code, tweaking visual design elements, and brainstorming what to write. Trying to take the whole of my life and summarize it in a way that’s mostly organized and hopefully impactful.

As the days and weeks go on, I’ll be iteratively building this site out with more articles and updates. I’m staring at pages right now thinking to myself, “Yeah, I want this to read differently. Maybe I should redesign this section. The graphics don’t seem quite right. Would a visitor really get what I’m trying to say? Should I be saying what I’m saying? Is it professional? Is it too personal? Should I be more technical? What’s the story I’m trying to tell?”

Perfectionist self‑doubt kicks in, for sure. But it’s been a really great experience, as tedious and painful as it’s been. I feel like I’ve finally had an opportunity to really get to know myself. I’ve been running through all the existential questions one might ask: Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? What experiences in my past really excited me? What are the things I want to work on now? What does success look like? How do I want to impact the world? Where do I see my life going? Where do I want to live?

They’re questions I think many of us have after a few decades in the working world, as we are long past our college years when we had a lot of ideas but not much life experience. But they’re also questions I’ve needed to take a moment to answer. Which is partly why I designed this site to read like a story. I am Allen Walker. What I did before was Chapter 1, who I was. Now, I’m turning the page and ready to write the next chapter of my life. Chapter Two.

Over the coming weeks and months, I plan to expand on some of these themes in new articles. There have been so many transformational moments in my career that have shaped my perspective on life and work. Successes where I felt on top of the world, and crushing failures that forced me to rebuild from the ground up. Through it all, I’ve come to understand what emotional resiliency really means and how it shapes perspective. Fear of failure has been replaced with the belief that, eventually, you’ll get it right. Dust yourself off, pop back up, figure it out and keep on trudging ahead.

And yes, I’ll be perfectly honest here. The last 18 months have been one of the most personally and professionally challenging periods of my life. I’ve been forced to look at the world in a new way. I’ve had to rebuild who I am. I know I’m better for it. I’m excited to see where this goes, even though the path forward is uncertain.

Onward ho.