Welcome to my site, Driven By Obsession. My name is Nick Engeldinger and I’m a Web Design and Interactive Media major at the Art Institute of Portland. This site is my virtual playground and I appreciate your visiting it. I am a multifaceted individual who has taken the path less traveled to get where I am today. I have a diverse set of interests and skills that serve me well as a creative professional.
I began my studies at the Art Institute after doing some soul searching. I spent the previous decade in the facilities maintenance and management. I started out working in commercial facilities and then moved into condominiums, specializing in high-rises mixed-use developments. I enjoyed working in that industry in Portland during a period if unprecedented growth and I was afforded the opportunity to work with industry leading technologies.
While I enjoyed the technical aspects of my job I came to tire of the round-the-clock nature of the job and realized that middle management was not where I wanted to spend the next ten years of my life. I took some time off and evaluated my options and investigated available opportunities. I was previously attending college part time while working and originally planned on attaining a bachelor’s degree in project management.
I decided to go back to school full time and get my bachelor’s degree but determined I wasn’t passionate about project management. There are a lot of things I’m passionate about but project management just wasn’t one of them. I did find a program and field that offered opportunities that dovetailed my passion for all things digital, and that was web development.
I had always been interested in the web and learned some basic html (a web programming language) early on when the web wasn’t such a rich environment (graphically speaking) and I always enjoyed toying around with it. Why not continue to do something I enjoy and go ahead and make a career at it? That is what brought me to the Art Institute and ultimately what brought this page to you.