Up front, I have no intention of trying to detract from any of those accomplishments, because you've obviously been grinding pretty hard for a while and admire the tenacity you must have had as a kid and the progression you've seemed to follow.

I do however find it under-discussed how many subsequent dice rolls have to at least partially work out for that tenacity, and those little shifts, to be a compounding positive instead of negative, and usefully applied long-term. I'd be curious if you had any major setbacks that you rebounded from after things started rolling successfully forward for you. Now at 32, unemployed with a spotty resume and no prospects, I could really use a &pointer (or reference ;))

Reading through your comment and picturing my own upbringing (poor, abusive, but I guess I got a handle on it and discovered programming through gaming eventually, it does make me sad that although there were hand-me-down computers available that I gravitated toward and experimented with, I could not picture where the nearest library was, and had to Google it now. I'm not particularly resentful though, I did get out, and I'm grateful for that.

I wonder if the books alone would have been enough, but having the books and the physical escape together is kind of incredible, and it's heartening to hear you used the hell out of that space.

Much earlier on, I had some exposure to small motors, and had some mentorship from my extended family on the programming front, but didn't really have a sense of how to build on that; no conception of how to connect motors with gears in a more complex system, no business exposure at all, no ability or framework for learning how to execute on any project, and just a debilitating lack of motivation up until around 17, along with no appreciation for the idea of proving myself measurably; I thought I was capable, but apparently wasn't. I got my little bots for Runescape running though, and that was empowering.

Thankfully, I did and continue to have a similar refuge at the skatepark, which provided me some social and physical benefits for free, much like your basketball league, that a surprising amount of people I meet now don't have. I was nerdy, but couldn't execute, and couldn't see how I'd get there. My first job was a glimpse into how much potential there was available; I made more than my father who I was on good terms with, but then I was laid off for lack of reason to have me on the payroll, which took a positive signal and turned it into hopelessness in a way. I experienced adult job loss my first time trying. It was a great opportunity that I relish in some ways still. I then got another job as a frontend developer, making a bit more, and then burnt out, slowed down, and got fired, partially because I was trying to do CSS things that nobody was paying me to do, instead of just writing some JavaScript to handle dynamic layout and getting the job done. I was too deep in the weeds and got stuck there, but the idea of just cranking out things quickly wasn't stimulating enough and I'd just sit there trying to convince my brain to do the work.

Since then, it's just been gradual pay increases, some early freelance clients that worked out for a while, but at this point I've never held a continuous job for longer than a year and a half, and I feel like the pieces of minor success are hard to stabilize, despite being in a wildly better situation still than I'd ever have imagined in high school, and a hell of a lot of personal inward reflection. My last job title was Software Engineer II, but really I'm just a generalist that keeps failing upward, and I don't know whether if I were to double-down and specialize more, go deeper, or pivot out completely, I'd be able to do that well; it's a bit of a constant existential crisis. It's hard to be consistent over a long period of time without a manager deciding I was a liability or me just burning out so badly, or a series of unfortunate life events coming together for the negative, and once you're out, it's extremely hard to get back in.

For the last year, I've been working my way through Nand2Tetris, because in a career highlight I landed an actual interview with Apple (that ended up going nowhere, rightfully so because my lowest level knowledge didn't exist) as well as building a small SwiftUI project that may or may not see the light of day, and while I think those are positive moves, it's going to be a hard year ahead that may take me to net zero again unless I can pick up something in general labor for while (Waiting tables would be quite difficult without a solid short-term memory, and don’t believe someone would hire me for that with largely tech experience and random interspersed menial work).

Anyhow, ultimately I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment, those little shifts really do add up for either the positive or sometimes negative. I think the longer you can keep them positive, keep the ball rolling forward, the more likely things will work out, and as a society it's crucial we continue making it possible to smooth out the experience of life, especially for people who grow up in volatile situations.