So, what is design? This was the question that kept me up in the early 2000s. I was 12 when we became friends, and it felt like the ushering of a child into puberty without any preemptive lessons. At first, I thought that design was making a plane from trimmed paper; later it was origami, then slicing different carpets with a razor so it fits the edges of my room. I liked it, the thought of doing something as bare as this made me feel elated and I was applauded because I could do something different; so I thought. All I had to do was imagine it, then I create and if it doesn't work, I keep at it until there was an answer--but many a time, there were no answers. Towards the latter part of the late 2000s, writing became a thing; perhaps an escape route for me. The desire to invent things with paper had shifted to scribbling sentences on paper. Yet, all this time, all I wanted to do was design. Create something that people will love, use and acknowledge.

I guess reading this quote: "The craving of a man is to be appreciated," made me yearn for the possibility of being an inventor. But this was all happening within the madness of my parent's divorce and the relocation, both of body, mind and soul. It was a catastrophe! Thus came the end of my vision of becoming a designer, even though I had no idea what it meant to me. Over the next few years, confusion and I went on a road trip, even though the need to design was still there. Lurking in the darkness of my heart. Perhaps it needed to be saved, but who cares? No one cared about me, so why should I care about creating something that people will enjoy and appreciate? So, many more years passed and I became an adult, and the need for varsity emerged like frustration from the lips of a pregnant woman. It was for me to be enrolled in the yes-sir and yes-ma regime of the educational system in the southern part of Nigeria. I hated it! But one thing I enjoyed the most after a few years of wandering in the mountain was reading; especially the "Introduction to Psychology," by Kuppuswamy. Which I read a few hundred times*.* I found myself in these kinds of books, lost, yet with an unimaginable prowess to define my own life. So in the fall of 2008, I started applying for scholarships, started writing again, and figuring out what design meant to me.

But none of this materialized the way I wanted it, even though I was shortlisted for the "Youth Landscape Forum," in Peru, South America, I couldn't attend because there was no money. So the dream of being something else bored itself to sleep. While I continued, in silence, the dictating my choices. The first, varsity, I cleared all my exams and got accepted to study Physics. I love Physics, but it was the circumstances around my childhood and the careless misrepresentation of my skills that made me almost run away from school. I valued the idea of dropping out and hitchhiking to Germany to be an automobile engineer. I mean, what can the Germans not create? Perhaps, I might find design there and be fulfilled. Four years of being in the regime ended, and I fled! Hallelujah!

Now over 23, that voice came again, silently, courageously, and asked: Ehikioya, what does design mean to you?" When I was younger I thought it was gluing torn paper together, so I did that, then I thought it was drawing so I did that too, then as I got older I realized that design was how I saw the world. And what I saw I could replicate, I could rebuild and bend it to my will. Even more so, what I desired and accepted, I could create something people wanted. I am beginning to see this again, the will to do things differently, to create from imagination. This desire took me on the path of becoming a software developer with a specialty in the backend. I had thought since I have dabbled in color, paper and posters frontend development would be a great fit. But then I realized that I fancied the things underneath the hood. Design became, for me, how things work behind the hood. And after many wandering years, I found it in writing code. I found design. And I could create anything from my imagination and the will to do it succinctly without fear.

AND YOU TOO CAN FIND IT. Happy coding.