When I was in fifth grade, one of my teachers let me use an old Apple IIe to start learning BASIC at recess. Almost twenty years later, I enrolled at the Flatiron School to study Software Engineering.
The path between these two points has not been direct.
I’ve always loved computers. As a kid, I would steal my Dad’s copy of Windows Magazine out of our mailbox before he had a chance to read it. Eventually he got wise to what was happening and decided it would be better for everyone if I just had my own subscription. Sometimes he would bring home a computer reference book like “Inside MS-DOS” and leave it in my room without any explanation. In a weird way, computer literature became a thing that…bonded us?
One day my Dad came home and told me the company he worked for “wanted to be on the World Wide Web” and wondered if I knew how to do something like that. He gave me a copy of “HTML for Dummies” and offered me $50 if I could do it. I had never been so motivated in my life.
Making that first website for my Dad was incredible. It felt like the perfect combination of left and right brain. It didn’t look like much, but something I had created was there for the world to see. Not soon after, someone else asked if I could make a site for their company. And then someone else asked. And someone else. All of the sudden I had my very own side-hustle.
As the internet evolved and things started MOVING AROUND on the page, I became fascinated with the interactive animation I was seeing. I wanted to learn how to make my sites look and behave just like that. It was just…cool. This led to an obsession with Macromedia Flash and my own personal contribution to the worst of the early 2000’s internet. I abandoned mostly all code for the fun and ease of designing with Flash. Eventually, all of my clients realized their sites weren’t viewable on devices that aren’t running Flash and just like that, my budding website empire crumbles within the year. Having put all my eggs in the Macromedia basket, I felt like it was the end of the road for my web design career.
So then, naturally, I decided to become an actor. Let someone else make the sites! I studied theater and then moved to New York City. Oddly enough, some people hired me.
But the thing about acting is the income isn’t always consistent. I found myself having to take other kinds of work more often that acting. I taught sculpture and comic book art, worked at an ice factory, and was a portfolio associate in fiduciary managment before finally settling on bartending as a regular gig. Bartending allowed me the flexibility to go to auditions and take the work as it came.
But bartending is not easy. The physical nature of the job is intense and the hospitality industry as a whole can by trying, but for me, one of the most difficult parts of bartending is that I’m not really that interested in it. It’s just…a job. I decided this year that my brain deserves better.
As I look back on what I’ve been excited about in the past, I remembered making that first website and how engaged I had been. Could I learn code now? It’s been so long since I’ve attempted anything like this and so much has changed. Looking at the potential mountain of difficult facing me was beyond intimidating.
And then my wife and I welcomed a daughter into the world. Daily, I see this little girl challenge her limits and demonstrate courage in the face of her fears.
What am I waiting for?