There have been a lot of tools that helped me with Stealing the Ruby Slippers. Some of them have been fun, but by far the most fun has been learning InDesign. In honor of Throwback Thursday…

When I was in high school I took a desktop publishing class (that was a class, right? Or was it a part of another class? I might not remember. Anyway…) My high school (and most in Minnesota, I think) had a club called “Business Professionals of America” or BPA for short. In BPA, I did fun things like business math (kinda sorta like accounting) law (lots and lots of questions about torts…tortes?), speech, desktop publishing (the vintage name for graphic design). I’m sure there were a bunch of other things I don’t compete in. (BPA has a website if you want to research this further.) The BPA members would travel to a regional contest, and then the students with the highest scores would get to go to the state contest.

State was held at the Hyatt in downtown Minneapolis (across the street from the hotel where Chris and I would eventually get married, incidentally). I went to state both my junior and senior year and won a whole bunch of trophies. I loved doing “desktop publishing.” But neither my majors, nor my jobs, nor my internships ever gave me a reason or opportunity to keep working in PageMaker. Getting into InDesign last month was actually the first time I’ve done any type of layout or design since the state BPA contest in 2000.

It. is. so. much. fun! And so frustrating! Obviously, InDesign is not PageMaker, and it’s been 14 years. So I’ve had to learn the whole program again. And, being me, I’ve done this with the help of my trusty friend, Google. I do something, it doesn’t work, I Google it, and try it again.

It’s fun. It’s kind of like driving around until you’re lost, then finding your way home, in order to learn a new city. You find things you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

It’s also just exciting to teach yourself something new.

I love it. And I highly recommend it.