I wouldn’t necessarily call this a tech blog. Even though I will be including various tutorials, opinions, and technical jargon related to the general IT field that I am developing my career around, my goal is to captivate the geeks as well as non-geeks out there. I’d especially like to target those who have ever said to themselves, “I graduated, now WTF am I supposed to do?!?” But maybe you are well on your way in your career already. Or maybe you fall into the category of that entry-level job applicant seeking for a stable job with minimum requirements of being young and innovative, getting paid a shit salary, and — oh yeah, you also need to have 3 years of experience too because they don’t care that you were a full-time student just a year or two ago. If so, this blog was meant for you.

Here’s a little backstory:
Chicago has been my hometown for the majority of my life. That means that by the time I was able to put together my first computer (circa 1999), I was also old enough to shovel the driveway…and shovel it again…and again…in the same hour. There’s a reason Chicagoans install after-market auto starter for their cars and leave it running for half an hour every morning, because F the environment, it’s cold as balls there! But the first 22 years of my life was pretty standard and boring, so I’m fast forwarding to the age of 23, which was after I accrued a HUGE FORTUNE…of debt…courtesy of Northwestern University, Class of 2013. This was when I vowed to never shovel my car out of a snowbank again and jump-started my career in Network Engineering.

Jump-start (n.)  The act or process of starting or setting in motion something that is stalled or sluggish  —Dictionary.com

I like this phrase. I feel like it perfectly describes the moments leading up to my career change. In the automobile world, requiring a jump-start means your car was functional and taking you to point A to point B.  But one day, when you’re already late for work, you turn the key and say to yourself, “shit…what the hell is going on!”

Going from point A to point B meant working my way through college with a degree in biology and eventually having a career in the health field, specifically dentistry. Dental school meant having the prestige of being a doctor without requiring years of residency and all the other debt-accruing things REAL doctors go through — I’m just kidding, but in a medical emergency, Dr. Stu (Hangover) wouldn’t be my first choice. Luckily for me, I quickly learned that my aspiration to give people the smile they deserved, a corny line in my college application statement, was definitely not me. I also learned that there were a ton of other ways to make money without signing your life away to student loans.  I mean, how do you expect a 17 year old to know what they wanted to do for the rest of their life? For all we knew back then, hampers magically washed and folded our clothes. But I sold myself the idea of being a dentist all the way up until graduation.

After stumbling my way through college, I tried as hard to get into Dental school as I tried attending my classes.  For clarification, if I was already 10 minutes late, I gave up going to class…for the rest of the day. I’ll be honest, I was totally checked out of trying becoming a doctor anymore. Even if I did get into Dental school, I knew deep down inside that I would have regretted every second of it. By this time, I was already looking at opportunities in free-lance digital design, website design/administration, and digital marketing. I always had a knack for spending way too much time in front of my computer but I also knew I was kind of good at that stuff. That’s when the opportunity of moving to sunny California to join a start-up IT firm fell across my lap. And that’s where the pieces starting coming together. Hello SoCal.

TL;DR — Chicago is cold, goodbye doctor life, and “Hello, World!”