Decoder Cards has been creating and selling assorted paper products for about five years but this latest phase started in 2023.
Is it nature or nurture? Many families see creativity as a hobby and any professional aspirations are actively discouraged. For my family, being creative and earning your way with a creative discipline was never discouraged. Some of my family and extended family have been involved in some aspects of the creative community for more than one hundred years. My great uncle was an itinerant artist in Colorado focusing on religious art in various small churches on the Eastern Plains. Currently, some of my family and extended family are involved in the arts in professional roles and some have earned national and international recognition.
For me, most of my career was in software and being creative was just a hobby but, over time, the hobbies expanded to fill ever more time. My creativity has included building furniture, house remodels, photography and countless other everyday activities! Recently my creative priorities are focused on outdoor adventures, photography, technology, and their intersections with diversity.
My interest in diversity is focused on the missing Latino / Indigenous participation in the outdoors and the broader society. Historically discrimination was very overt and accepted but discrimination had evolved into a more subtle adversary. Recently, within some groups, discrimination has become too mainstream and way too acceptable. For the Latino / Indigenous community discrimination remains a daily experience that occurs in plain sight but not always obvious to anyone who has not directly experienced discrimination. Personally, discrimination has been a lifetime experience but, like most of us, we learn to cope and adjust and choose our battles.
Decoder Cards will provide insight and humor into diversity within some of our published content.