What got me into graphic design and game design

Hello,
This is my first article so I thought that I would introduce myself and tell a bit about my background.
Like a lot of people that grew up in the 80's & 90's I grew up with video games back before the advanced graphics we have today. My first console was a NES that I bought off of a friend that had upgraded to a SNES, I remember getting all of one game new and that was off of a clearance rack at the mall. I ended up building quite the collection of games over the years as people upgraded to better systems and didn't want their games anymore; a trend I regretfully followed myself when I finally got a Playstation 1.
With the playstation one came a whole new world of games, my favorite of which being "Crash Team Racing" from the Crash Bandicoot series. When I say this was was my favorite game I mean I beat the entire thing and got good enough that no one could beat me until a friend in college that had many a match with me and actually beat me several times. I bring up this game because it was this game that got my interest in game design and ultimately graphic design too. There was an issue of "Game Informer" if I remember the name right that had an entire strategy guide and behind the scenes information about the game and how it was made. Seeing the wireframes of models caught my interest a lot and I wanted to do that. Unfortunately even by the time I graduated high school the only places I could find that taught game design were in Texas or California and my parents barely had the money for me to go to the local University. With this I decided to pursue graphic design since that was the next closest thing to game design. Fast forward a bit and I had off and on toyed with the idea of learning Blender which was still new at that time but I did not know how to do the coding necessary to make a game so I put it off. One day a former college roommate and still close friend told me that one of his co-workers was starting an indie studio and needed someone to do graphic and asked if I wanted my name passed along. Of course I told him to pass my name and number along and we would see where it went. I met up with Jared and we discussed the idea he had for the game he wanted me to help with. He explained that the idea of the game was to control a bird and collect points by crapping on people and cars. I told his this would either be the best game ever or worst and if it was the best I wanted my name on it, I didn't want to be one of the people that passed up a great opportunity. I then told him that I had no experience with 3D Modeling but was more than willing to learn. He told me that was fine and he looked forward to us working together.
Initially I started out by looking into Maya only to realize that A) it is expensive and there's that bit where you aren't supposed to make money with the student version. & B) finding good quality beginner tutorials for it for free was extremely difficult. This being said, I went with Blender 3D because wow the amount of tutorials that you can get for free with this open source program. My first week I was able to get a rough and I do mean rough model put together and within 3 weeks I had a model that didn't look completely like a blob that actually had a basic animation, all self taught with articles and videos online. My first couple of rounds of models weren't great but I learned as I did more and went through more tutorials. After a few tries of getting the game started we finally seemed like we were going to get going good only this time with 2D sprite sheets, I wasn't thrilled about that but at least I was getting to help with a game. Then it came time to actually make the bird poop and score points and nothing happened, come to find out one of the guys setting up the level didn't set up the level right as he had been instructed so there wasn't enough room or time to run the necessary code. Since we had to rebuild the game anyway we decided to go with 3D models this time...the guy who made a mistake setting up the game decided to leave the team. This time we set things up right, was there room for improvement? Of course but we were putting together a working game with 3D models. After over 2 years we finally launched our game, "Don't Look Up" on Android (If you can't find it, look for "Baynecorp"). Our next big thing was something I had never thought about doing but was thrilled when it came about, we had a booth at a local comic convention! I got to say that I was part of a team that had not only launched a game but had also had a booth at a Con!
While at "Geek'd Con" I found a booth for a digital art program that had started close to where the Con was going on at. I talked with them during a break and told them I was part of a team that had released a game and had a booth there (saying that did not get old.). They gave me a card and said that they wanted to meet with me. I put together a portfolio and sent it to them and they loved it and had me come by to tour the place and take a few tests. I came back a few weeks later for an interview and they said that they would be back in touch with my offer for a scholarship. I waited in anticipation for the letter to come, first the acceptance letter with a note that my scholarship letter would be coming soon. When the scholarship letter finally came in it was all of 1/3 of what I needed and there was no way I could afford the rest, I still had college loans to pay and was none to willing to add on to that. I informed them that the amount that they had offered was insufficient considering my skillset in modeling and I would be declining their offer. A year later they contacted me again saying that registration was opening again and they still were interested in me and still had my portfolio on file. I waited for the letter, not holding my breath at all and this time I did not receive an offer 1/3 of what I needed, I received one that was not even half the original offer. I informed them that if they were that interested in me to offer the scholarship again a year later that their offer should have gone up, not down and I again turned the offer down. I have since moved on and am very happy that I did not accept the offer either time because not only am I not in more debt but shortly after I met my now wife who at the time lived a long distance from the digital art program.
This brings us up to present day, I am still going through Blender tutorials to learn new techniques and have made many models for games that we plan to finish and am also working on learning coding myself to help out with the game coding. I regularly listen to game design and game theory youtube channels and anytime I play a game I am paying attention to mechanics and graphics, constantly looking for ideas and inspirations. I hope you've enjoyed this bit of backstory on me and will come back as I write on game graphic design related issues.