Wow, you’re actually reading this?! You must be curious then (or a psychotic nut-bag), I guess it makes sense. Why would you want to read the ramblings about how to improve you life written by someone who hasn’t shared anything with you about themselves?
With that said, here’s some of my background:
I started off life pretty normally, I was always a fairly tall and skinny kid. I discovered an interest in video games and computers fairly early on in life although it wasn’t until I was in about 6th grade that my family got our first one (an IBM PS/1 – a 486 SX if you’re curious). I remember my family was one of the first in the neighborhood to get internet access and my parents even went so far as to get a second phone line for the computer. Ahh the days of hearing the modem do it’s thing over the phone line, then crawling along at 14.4Kbps.
In those days I thought I wanted to write computer games for a living (these days I stick to playing them as I’m far too unmotivated to put in the work it takes to produce games). I learned some HTML in 8th grade and then some BASIC in 9th grade and some C++ throughout the rest of high school. But alas, I was never disciplined enough to make myself learn more than the syntax of the languages. I didn’t have any grounding in program design or documentation, which as anyone who’s programmed something that has more than a page worth code will tell you is vital.
After graduating high school I got a job at the local Checker Auto Parts (now O’Reilly’s) and computers took a bit of a back seat to cars. I didn’t ever have much money to spend on my car (too busy buying as much Pepsi as I could get my hands on). After working at Checker for a couple years I jumped around between jobs for a few years until I got laid off a job at an electronics manufacturing company. That was for the best, as I had to deal with a lot of shitty chemicals and such.
Around the same time I was working at said electronics company I also started taking some Karate classes. Up until that point I was never very active, at the time I was 6’4″ and weighed in around 165lbs.
Starting my study of the Martial Arts also created a turning point in my life. Not the arts themselves (although they have pointed me to some interesting places), really the initial kick-start was my first Instructor. He’s a life coach and would put some of the same processes into the classes that he would use in his coaching. During my stint there, I got the opportunity to become an assistant instructor while I was working on my 1st degree black belt. I loved it, although I had a lot to learn about working with and teach individuals and groups.
With the positive influence of the Karate and the layoff from my job I decide to go back to school at a local tech college and finally learn how to program. I spent about two years there and learned quite a bit about programming. Well more of the basics anyway, but things really made sense and I had some actual schooling to back it up. Armed with my two years of tech school and just happening to have a student that was the VP at a robotic company, I was offered a job doing product testing. That job was a blast, but alas they were forced to do layoffs after a couple years.
Luckily I had decided to go back to school, but this time at the state run university in the area. I started with the intention of studying Computer Science, but with the job I got doing tech support at a web hosting company paired with my inability to cooperate with algebra, I decided I should look into another area.
With everything I’d come across and the classes I found myself enjoying the most I thought I’d give Psychology a try. So here we are presently, I’m not done with my bachelors degree yet, but I’m closer than I was 3 and 1/2 years ago. As well I’ve realized that I want to help people see their own potential and live up to it.