PD: Story Telling
After graduating college with a degree in English, I found myself wondering what exactly it was I wanted to do with my life. I spent my summers in college doing a door to door sales internship in which I was pretty successful and through which I gained a vast number of applicable real world marketable skills in the field of sales. It made the most sense to capitalize on my skill set and take the next step into corporate sales. I applied and was hired by a New York startup to be an outside sales rep for the Portland Metro area in Oregon. I was full of excitement for what the future held, especially now that I had a 6 figure salary to manifest all of my dreams.
The only problem was I had zero passion for the product I was selling, and the day to day activities mostly consisted of driving to different doctor’s offices and waiting in waiting rooms, trying to see doctors that had no interest in speaking with me. It wasn’t really the glitz and glam that I had been anticipating for my first career out of college, and after 5 months I decided it wasn’t the career path for me. I wondered to myself, “What if I spent 50+ hours a week investing my time and energy into my own dream instead of working to help someone else accomplish theirs?” This was at a time when I was about a year into making my own clothing to wear at music festivals. At that point, I was still trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted. I had existed within a traditionally structured life trajectory up to that point and began to wonder if I was actually happy following the path I was told to take.
When I left ZocDoc, I had a decent nest egg saved up so I decided to start throwing myself deeper into my passion for sewing. It was an avenue that was challenging, creatively satisfying, something that I was actually pretty good at, and the best part was that people were willing to pay me to make things for them. What started as a hobby quickly blossomed into a startup of my own. That same summer, I found myself with a ticket to Burning Man, and armed with a wardrobe of costumes of my own creation I set out on what would be the most pivotal experience of my life.
There are no words to describe what Burning Man is, but for me it was a completely transformational expereince. I saw 70,000 people who were potential clients for my budding sewing business and even if a fraction of them liked what I was doing, I was good to go. It was the inspirational fuel I needed that ignited the spark of passion I was tenderly holding close to my chest into a blazing inferno of creativity and sparkles. Because the clothing I made was exclusively using holographic spandex.
Around that same time, I was synchronistically ushered into the mysterious world of the Humboldt cannabis industry. It was an environment in which I could directly apply the self-motivated schedule and success principles I had learned knocking on doors during my summers in college, but instead of working on commission, everything was based on how much I could produce. Quickly acclimating and learning the ins and outs of the industry, I began the second branch of the path I would walk for the rest of my 20’s.
Between 2012-2018, my years were broken up into 3 main chapters. Spring and Summer were entirely dedicated to sewing and building my sewing business, which I did by pulling 16 hour work days during the week and traveling to festivals all over the west coast and vending my creations on the weekends. The Summer would always be a huge build up to once again making the pilgrimage to the desert for Burning Man, where I would always reveal my newest designs and cutting edge creations. When the weather started to cool and the leaves began to turn, I would make my way down to California to work for 3 months straight, immersed in nature and unplugged from fast paced swirl of the Summer Months. I would return home in December for some time with my family over the holidays, and be off on an international backpacking adventure from January-April. I was at a time in my life where I was my own boss and the master of my own destiny. I chased down every dream I had, and lived life to the fullest savoring each and every day.
And then one day I realized that the lights didn’t shine quite as bright. The thrills I sought no longer scratched the itch they once did. The activities that I had once lived for started to feel a little bit empty. I had built a thriving festival fashion boutique with orders going out all over the world. I was managing a team of 10 and helping to run a multi-million dollar cannabis operation. I had backpacked my way through South America, Central America and all over Southeast Asia. I was known and loved by a thriving community of vibrant and inspiring humans. And yet there was an emptiness to it all.
In 2016 I began seeking for the piece that was missing. I was called to sit in Vipassana, a 10 day silent meditation retreat. A mentor told me that if I really wanted to take a step toward the next level, this was what I needed to do. He was right. Over those 10 days I got to know myself without all the external validation I realized I had been seeking.
From there I began diving inward instead of seeking outward. I continued running my sewing business and working in California in the Fall, but I began dedicating my Winter to taking courses on meditation and eventual tai chi. I found a balance that I had never known, and began to see how existing from a place of center brought harmony and alignment to the other pieces of my life. Instead of existing in such drastic extremes I began to find a calm that I had never really known.
Not long after a 3 month meditation retreat, during which I spent 54 days in silence, I met a girl worth moving to Colorado to be with. A few months before we met, she was given the opportunity to open a business in Denver. Within a week of landing in Denver a friend of mine started a coding boot camp. When he told me about it, there was something that clicked in me, a passion to embark on a new adventure in learning and creativity that was yet unexplored. I filed it away for the future.
As I began to settle into a more grounded routine in Denver my partner’s business began to take shape, and I started focusing more energy into supporting her project. We spent 2018-2019 designing every inch of what has become Honey Elixir Bar. It was a massive project that took everything we had collectively, and more. 2 years had passed since that first conversation with my friend about going into a boot camp, and in those 2 years he had graduated and gotten a developer job. I heard often about how much it challenged him in the best way possible and how rewarding of an experience it was for him.
Witnessing my partner take on the greatest challenge of her life to open her business, I was finally ready to start my own next greatest challenge. My friend, who had attended a different boot camp, told me Turing was the only place to go. I finally descended into the basement for a try coding weekend and was immediately hooked.
I am committed to being a student of life, always learning, seeking and expanding. From where I am now, becoming a developer is the only path I can see forward that promises a lifelong fulfilling career filled with an ever expanding knowledge base that can never truly be mastered. The ever evolving nature of the industry excites me as it guarantees a dynamic future, giving me the opportunity to help co-create technologies that will shape the next chapter of this planet. I am dedicated to helping bring positive and lasting change in people’s lives and I hope to be able to contribute to the rainbow code base that will bring our species into a new paradigm of sustainability and healing. I don’t know what my future holds, but I know that where I’ve come from has given me a vast range of experiences that drive me to be of service for the betterment of all.