There were two classes during the whole of my high school tenure that I can say I thoroughly, truly enjoyed: Web Design and Computer Programming. I am sure that part of this was due to my oft-times unhealthy tendency to feel mindlessly content while sitting in front of a computer screen. However, I'm also certain that these two classes were where I caught the "I just made something from nothing and I can get attention from it" bug. This would also lead to lengthy endeavors into song-writing, singing, and guitar playing, but that's not the focus of this website.

After high school, I attended college at Mansfield University majoring in Computer Science, since it seemed the safest choice while I decided what I really wanted to do with my life.

After all, try as we might we all ultimately end up becoming defined by our profession in many a social situation. At eighteen, I barely knew who I was, let alone who I wanted to be conveniently classified as for the next four decades.

During the course of this reflection and decision-making process, I accidentally let four years pass and got a CIS degree with some internships in the middle. It's probably for the best that I didn't try to become a lawyer. After that was over, it seemed it was time for "real life" to start.

As it happened, real life is actually stressful. I wish someone had warned me.

I burned out on my first "real" job after college, working as a Web Application Developer for a Geographic Information Services company, after a year. This was due to both the company culture and my complete and utter inattention to, and mis-mangement of, my mental health. To be clear, I learned A LOT at this job. I worked with some really smart and supportive people. I also spent the night in the office more than once because I was a stubborn child who was too afraid or ignorant to ask the right questions early enough in any project and admit, to myself and others, that I NEEDED help.

const brandon = new FoolishProgrammer(); 

while (brandon.selfImposedProblems > 0) {
    brandon.RefuseToAskQuestions(); 
    brandon.WorkTooManyHours();
    brandon.selfImposedProblems += this.grumpyClients.length * CAFFEINE_CONSUMPTION_CONSTANT; 
} 

My next job was middling at an education agency for six years, where stress was rarely if ever a factor. I worked on software to support the agency itself and to help with special education needs. It was a great gig. In retrospect, however, I should have learned about 70% more during that time than I did. At that point in my life, I needed pressure to be motivated for improvement.

After this, I spent about two and a half years in healthcare where I once again managed to get myself under the gun and burned out, along with finding myself with a very unhealthy competitive streak. Boy, I wish growing up was linear. Here I did have an exceptional mentor, though, and that was worth anything else that came with the job.

Fast-forward some years and I find myself currently having a great job in publishing, working on applications that support my company while working with a great group of people. Somewhere between then and now, I finally got healthy habits for being passionate about improving in my vocation on my own time, while still having great work/life balance and relatively minimal stress. That was the big motivator for this web site: to continue to hold myself accountable for learning and placing challenges before myself to continue to improve.

If you've made it to this point in the copy on this page, I can only imagine that you're nearly asleep, but I appreciate your dedication to hearing a boring stranger's professional life story. Hopefully the abridged version of my various pitfalls throughout my career may help you avoid them yourself.