[ad_1] When I first chatted with Topher about doing an article for HeroPress, I couldn’t quite think of how I would put the words together to describe my life, and what has gotten me to where I am now. Am I that interesting? This is exactly where imposter syndrome grabs you by the balls thinking you aren’t good enough. After chatting with him for a bit, and asking about how I should go about it, he just told me to be real and tell my story. Well, here I am. This isn’t the the typical biographical, motivational, PG bullshit. This is my life. Hold onto your ass, and enjoy the ride. Independence From Birth From birth, the odds were both stacked against me and in my favor. When you’re the child of a 15 year old mother who grew up in poverty, you don’t have many options in front of you. I’ve told people several times that it’s not about the hand you’re dealt; it’s about how you play it. You bet slowly and carefully with the little you have, and when you see that ace, you take the house. For me, that ace was a computer. Around the age of 5 or so, I remember getting a new-to-us computer and being introduced to Wolfenstein 3D. Yeah, that badass Nazi-slaying game by iD Software where you go in and out of too many doors that look the same, until you eventually get to slay Mecha-Hitler. As you probably know, floppies and DOS were a thing at that time. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, get off my lawn. Being brought up in a family that takes very much of a “if you want it, get it yourself. Nobody is going to hand you what you want” approach, I only was shown how to start it up a few times. After that, I’m on my own. At that time, I learned the two most important values in my life: to learn things on my own, and that if I want something, I have to bust my ass for it. This, of course, led to a life of tinkering. To a passion for finding out how things work. If I was curious about something, I took it apart. A perfect example of this is the time my parents discovered that I was listening to my neighbor’s cordless phone conversations using a busted toy walkie-talkie. I didn’t realize it then, but this was my first experience with truly making something work for a purpose other than what it was intended for. My mother still loves telling that story for a good laugh, but to me, it’s a defining moment. The moment when I never became happy with how things are. The moment my wife sometimes wishes never happened so that we wouldn’t have closets full of miscellaneous defunct tech and hacked solutions to problems that don’t actually exist throughout the house. “Yes, honey. We DO need to be able to access everything in the house with every device imaginable.” “No, we can’t just use the regular cable box to watch TV.” We all know there’s always some issues that come with habits like those previously mentioned. I didn’t have a whole lot of friends, and nothing was ever good enough. I didn’t realize it until much later, but this eventually led to getting into plenty of trouble. Descent Into Darkness School was hell. From elementary school to middle school, we moved quite a bit. Friends came and went, while my computer and constant craving for knowledge was always there. Around this time, I really stopped giving two shits about reality. Teachers were told to go fuck themselves, and I hated my parents. I didn’t get along with the other kids very well, and had terrible grades. Thankfully, my time spent alone led me to a single book that I still own to this day: Creating Web Pages with HTML. While looking at the examples makes me cringe every time, it reminds me of exactly where I came from. I wish I could tell you that I just spent all of my time progressing my skills to be where I am now, but unfortunately, things went grinding to a halt. My hatred for everyone got much worse, and I simply didn’t have the coping skills to deal with it. I just didn’t care about being alive anymore and seriously considered suicide several times. That was about the same time that I discovered that cutting myself made the pain go away. Both physically and mentally, I would hurt myself daily. Now that I look back on it, I suppose that I felt I should be punished for not being good enough, and the pain took away from reality. This got to the point where I had deep gashes and would keep razor blades from box cutters in my wallet to get me through the day. I absolutely craved that feeling. I needed it. I later just shut down completely. I was an absolute fucking mess. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I only cared about my addiction to watching myself bleed. Even my best friend, Pete, stopped talking to me. This got to a point that I was kicked out to be on my own. As a teenager, with just the clothes on my back and the car that I saved up to buy, I headed out at around 6am to the Wal-Mart parking lot where I had to figure out my next move. Without a cell phone, and most pay phones being phased out in favor of fancy flip phones, I didn’t have any communication with anyone. Not even my girlfriend at the time, Robin was in contact. As I happened to know that she was working at Circuit City that day (where I also worked part time), I headed her way that morning. Her incredible generosity kept me fed, clothed, and a hotel room for a few days, and eventually
Continue reading