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Good question.
I should start by saying that I am relatively new to blogging, and admittedly publishing my thoughts online isn’t on my list of favorite things to do. That being said, I hope to use this blog to strengthen my writing and become more comfortable in the blogosphere. After all, isn’t learning all about exploring the unkown?
Anyway.
For a long time, software to me was this magical thing. Software is this ubiquitous thing; it’s literally everywhere and yet, it seemed untouchable. A handful of computer geniuses sit in dark rooms, lit only by the glow of their screens, and they create all of the software that we see. I, the lay person, would never be able to be a part of that exclusive coders club.
My family has always considered me a “computer person,” which was self-evident early on. When I was ten years old, I completed a summer internship at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. I worked with a mentor in 3D design using IronCAD. I remember flipping out when my mentor, scientist Dave Nadeau, gave me a copy of IronCAD in a floppy disk and told me to be careful with it because the program costs $3000. How many $3000 floppy disks have you seen recently? Exactly. I still have it, too.
I was introduced to coding in high school. In 10th grade I took a class in C++ and Pascal, and I freakin’ loved it. I was at the top of my class and would finish projects days ahead of everyone else. While waiting for the rest of the class to catch up, I would create text-adventure games to play with my friends. At 16 I thought it would be so cool to grow up to be a videogame developer. The problem was, at 16, I wanted to grow up to do a lot of things. My passion for music trumped my other interests, and coding fell by the wayside.
I played in bands through middle school and high school and went on to get a BM in Jazz Performance at Temple University and an MM in Studio Jazz Writing from the University of Miami. I have had some amazing opportunities over the years, including:
- Teaching music for a month in Ghana
- Transcribing/orchestrating for the Latin Music Hall of Fame
- Video work for a George Benson album
- Arranging for Bruce Hornsby
- Production credits on a PBS special album with Bobby McFerrin, Terence Blanchard, Chick Corea, and Dave Grusin
- Playing shows with my bands up and down the East Coast
As amazing as it can be, the reality is that working musician life is mostly a tedious grind. You can spend thousands of hours honing a craft, then hundreds trying to find work. And once the work is done, you can spend hundreds of hours tracking down the money. The hustle has worn me down to the point where I have lost that passion for creating music. I have found myself turning down many performing/writing opportunities because they don’t pay enough. That’s not a good feeling. I shouldn’t have to fight for a fair wage, and honestly I don’t want to.
So I decided that I needed a change. A big one. I needed to do something that I felt good about, but also something that would bring financial security. That’s when I turned my eye back to coding, and I’m never looking back.