Introduction
Tags: webdev, motivation
Published: 2020-10-03 07:24:19

Warning -- Long
Quote Text == Tangents

# Hello! My name is Colton, and I am a new web developer.

I am writing this specific post as an introduction to others and to myself. 

>Introductions are hard, you never know what exactly to say or even what the other party is going to respond to. Sometimes you say the wrong thing, and offend a person. Other times you sell yourself short, or even shy away from participating in a conversation about something you are passionate about for fear that you may be judged on that passion.

>I find myself doing the latter quite often. My passions get released when, and with whom, I feel comfortable. 

>This is a cycle of thought that I believe starts in adolescence. When you start to put the toys of your youth away and move on to more "grown up" activities to be passionate about. I can still remember the time when I started to refuse playing with my younger brother, in order to spend more time with kids "my age". 

>It is all part of growing older and almost everyone goes through it, but I am unsure if this is generally a "good" thing. How many times have we spoken to a younger person about how they should "enjoy ${insertTopic} while you can"?

>Is adulthood the suppression of passions? Seems like a huge rip off to me. We get bills and stress and responsibilities while all of the things we enjoyed in the past get set aside.

>In the attempt to cut that tangent as short as possible. 

## Hello, my name is Colton and I am a web developer.
* I am also an avid video game player/streamer.
* A Star Wars, Star Trek, Star Gate, etc. lover.
* I know more movie dialogue quotes than I know what to do with (trust me, you don't want to watch Tombstone with my family and I).
* I consume books/comics/podcasts/shows in mass quantities. 
* I consider myself a philosopher first.
* I remember far too many song lyrics.
* I could go on, but you get the point.

The real point of all of this is to put my small little story into visualization.

So let me start one more time. 

### Hello, my name is Colton. 

I recently have been given a very strong kick in the a**, of the get your life together variety.

You see, all throughout my childhood, I was always exposed to technology. My parents weren't engineers or even very well versed in new tech, but luckily for me, my older brother was. 

He was 7 years older than me, so he was a great teacher when it came to more complex things, like cars and girls and computers.

Unfortunately, as I said above, he grew older while I was still figuring out the very basics. This left a bit of a gap for me, until we started using computers in school. 

All throughout my formative years, I knew I was going to do something with computers. I didn't know WHAT exactly, but something. 

Fast forward several years, and I start going to college. A community college at first, since I didn't really attempt to gain any scholarships, and there was no way my parents were going to send me to a University.

Then comes the ruin of my motivation.

This is all around the time of the '09 recession. After I got through the 101 courses and a few math/language/etc. prerequisites for the real meat and potatoes computer science courses. My school cut funding to the Comp Sci program. 

I tried to keep my momentum going. Branching into health and body studies, to try and become a personal trainer. Then into automotive repair, which I actually went pretty heavy into achieving certifications in brakes systems and suspension. 

Unfortunately these just didn't hold my interest as hard as tech did. Couple that with some of my friends graduating and getting into jobs where I was already making more money by waiting tables, and you have a recipe for early academic retirement.

I remained stagnant, in terms of academia, for roughly eight years. Looking back at this time of my life with the experiences that I have today, I get quite sad and angry at myself. I know I simply didn't have the drive that I do now, but I still want to go back and shake myself into action.

In those eight years I became a Twitch streamer, and then affiliate for Twitch in the first wave of that programs iteration. I grew very close with a small group of friends. I had genuine fun and laughter for the vast majority. I also had some very bad times. Lost some extraordinary friends. 

I sufficed myself to simply surviving and not living. I made enough money to cover my expenses, and even a little extra for a trip or new gaming rig every once in a while. I had my friends around me. It was comfortable.

As we all know, growth is not found in the comfort zone. 

I am not sure what triggered it at first. I only remember that one day I had enough of myself. I was in a dead end job, still serving tables. I was in a dead end relationship, we didn't even call each other boyfriend or girlfriend anymore. I snapped.

Luckily for me, my older brother had a place. Six hours away, in a completely different climate, and with a whole new set of people. 

This was about three and a half years ago now, and my life has changed by orders of magnitude. 

I met my, now, wife. I worked for several different companies, trying to find that passion again. We moved to another state. I worked for a couple more companies, one of these put me on the path to web development. My wife became pregnant. We moved to yet another state, for family assistance. 

I lived more in 3 years, than in the previous decade, by simply removing myself from my comfort zone. 

When we found out my wife was pregnant, I needed to make a hard choice. Do I revert to what I know, and work my butt off at multiple jobs? Or do I take a risk and shoot for more?

With some advice from a member of the computer science field, and some wonderful encouragement from my wife, I decided to try to get into the tech industry again by going through a coding bootcamp.

For the last year, I have been working full time and pushing myself through an intensive JavaScript based bootcamp. During this year, we have accepted help from family. My wife lost her job two weeks before she was scheduled to start maternity leave, due to Covid-19. I have had to learn AutoCAD as well as all the rules for telecom permit drafting, on top of learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Node, Express, SQL, Postgres, and many more tools. 

The version of me in that 8 year slump wouldn't have been able to do this. The version of me today is barely able to because of the motivation I have to give my son a beautiful life. 

I know this is a very long introduction message, and if you are reading still, I greatly appreciate you. 

My parting points are pretty simple, and have been repeated many times.

`Growth happens outside the comfort zone.`

`Passions should not be subdued for fear of judgment.`

And,

`Best time to start is right now, don't put off growth, we don't regret things that we did do but the things that we didn't do.`

Thank you for reading, and have a great day.

Colton