We Will Either Find a Way, or Make One

Everything In It’s Right Place

I live for that sweet, sweet moment. You’ve been working on an arrangement of music for weeks now; or you’ve been going over a spoken word piece again and again, trying to find the exact words, in the exact order, to pierce through to your audience’s core; or working until the early morning sunrise, mixing and mastering a live studio session, searching for that perfect balance of sound, blending the nuances of each individual part into a single, lively, alchemical whole…

And then you press play at long last. You take it all in.

The words click together. You have found what you were looking for.

You perform your piece of music. It has found you.

Everything has come together. You have taken an idea floating around in the inside somewhere and brought it down to Earth.
Having arrived at your destination, you look back and think “ah, what a journey!”

And then you are off again!

As it turns out, it is this same gratifying moment of creative problem solving that would lead me into the world of software engineering.

How the Heck Did We Get Here??

Upon graduating high school, I spent most of my young adult life on the road, traveling playing music with various acts and also managing and organizing local shows and events. It was a hard, fast life, but it granted me experiences and perspectives that I would have never had otherwise.

The sense of community that was cultivated in these performance art circles was very nourishing and inspiring to me. In 2014 I decided to get a team together and we opened our own music venue which operated as a hub for our local performance arts.

We saw a lot of talent and potential in the up and coming artists in our area, but because of sparse show opportunities, they were often overlooked or not getting the support they needed.

With our venue we created a strong local support system, giving local artists a space to organize their own events, and with the networking afforded us through our own touring we were able to bring in big name acts from all over the country!

Over time my responsibilities shifted more from performing to business/project management and audio engineering, running live sound and recording bands. I loved it, and as my experience grew I began to organize community projects and events outside of the scope of the show business.

In 2017 I stepped away from the venue and from live performing. I could feel a transition happening, but where that journey wanted to lead me was not yet clear.

I spent much of this time traveling and learning from different communities and teachers. I have long been fascinated by the world’s wisdom traditions and people that are asking ‘big questions’. Coupled with my own interests and experiences with mental health and self-development, I began seeking out training in different practices and tools in hopes of learning more about myself, the human experience, and helping others live more meaningful and enriching lives.

And 2020 was set to be my biggest year of travel yet!

Enter Global Pandemic

For something that is apparently inevitable in a globally connected economy, COVID sure seems like something we never saw coming.

Like most everyone, the global pandemic side-lined whatever plans I had devised for 2020.

During my time playing music or traveling I had always picked up odd jobs on the side when I needed to make ends meet. In this particular case I was also depending upon my ability to travel to determine what kind of work I would be taking up.

With all of that now either in question or out of the question it became solely odd jobs for me all around.

This helped reconnect me with that original feeling of transition that had inspired a shift of perspective back in 2017. I had contemplated and explored much in that time, but there was still a feeling like I had not yet landed.

The pandemic had begun to change how I looked at the world.

I see a world in which our global economy is transitioning from atoms to bits, a process that COVID played a big part in speeding up.

And as we continue to expand into and explore this digital landscape the tools in which we are doing so are ever increasing in their power and scope.

But how will we use that power moving forward?

This question still haunts me today.

{“Great Power” => “Great Responsibility”}

Through my responsibilities as a band manager, business manager, and audio engineer I have found myself often working with computers and occasionally with coding by proxy.

While contemplating what the “new normal” of society might pan out to look I now found myself with more free time to devote to studying developments in the digital sphere such as blockchain technologies.

I became excited by pondering the ways in which technologies of this nature might one day be implemented into the infrastructure of our communities to increase the variety of services and overall value of the commons.

However, the real “Aha” moment came for me when I met two people in the tech field. It had come up in two different conversations with two different people in the same week, and the both turned me on to the idea of entering the tech world. The way they spoke about coding opened my eyes to see this profession in a whole new light.

They recommended I play with it on my own and get my feet wet by seeking out some self teaching materials. I did, and the more I played around and learned, the more I fell in love.

I found the process of coding works well with my temperament and beautifully mirrors the way I approach writing music.

After running through some self paced courses I decided to take a deeper dive into Flatiron School’s online bootcamp program.
I am now two weeks in and loving it so far!

I have always been a hands on learner and I chose to pursue the bootcamp at Flatiron because that is exactly what they are offering from start to finish.

The challenges they are offering me is just what I need to advance my skills and understanding and it’s great to get to work with people just now entering this field along with you.

As one of my mentors once told me:

“Failures are inevitable on the road to success. Better to get out there and get to failing as soon as possible!”

Return

I’ve never been afraid to ask big questions, and I believe that we have the technologies we have today because people weren’t afraid to ask big questions.

-Will we find ways to accommodate the increasing automation of our society in ways that keep us from becoming automatons ourselves?

-Can the efficiency provided by such automation and digitization actual free us up to have more time and energy to spend being human?

-Can we find ways to utilize and capitalize on technological advancements beyond the harvesting and manipulation of our attention?

I don’t claim to have the answers to these questions, but one way or another we are playing out the potential answers to these scenarios right NOW.

The questions posed by our technology help define the age that we find ourselves in, and rather than contemplate these questions from the outside, I would rather participate in them from within.

I am humbled as I honor how far from mastery I am in this field.

I have so very much to learn, but learn I will.

The pursuit of mastery drives me forward and as we humans have been saying for a long time now:

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”