It was summer 2017, and I am in the Yosemite Valley. I was on a camping trip with my cousin and some of her friends, it was then that the seed was planted and my life trajectory was altered.
Growing up I wanted to be a sponsored skateboarder, from age 12 to 24 I was convinced that was my path. In the end it just never panned out. I still skate for fun and love it, but back then was left with a void. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was 24 and I had no direction.
From 25 to 31 I worked and explored mostly blue collar jobs and with some sales work sprinkled in there. I was miserable, but I learned a ton, and I am grateful for the experience in hindsight. In 2017 I was working at a bromeliad nursery and decided to go on this intriguing vacation to Yosemite. My cousin had invited me to go with her, and her then boy friend Collin up to the valley. I had just started rock climbing and thought this would be an amazing experience. Little did I know this trip would change the direction of my life in more ways than one. We arrived in the valley and set up camp, I was in awe of the beauty of the place. I had never seen anything like it, so there were already a lot of feelings.
Collin's dad Sean, had driven in to meet up with us for most of the trip. One way or another as people do, you get to know one another as you spend time together in a setting such as Yosemite. Inevitably we talked about life and Sean expressed in so many words how he thought that it was a great idea to get into tech and that's where it's at. He was working for Qualcomm at the time and had a respectable career. He was on PTO and was casually road tripping. Not just to Yosemite but to other great places in the west. To me he was living the dream. I had never really considered tech as a career path. Not because I didn't like it, but because I had never been exposed to it and did not have the confidence that I had the capacity or brains for it.
I had always been interested in engineering, design, and physics, but never knew how to express that for myself. I had the horse blinders on and was only focused on skateboarding. I would read books here and there on the subjects or get into deep conversations with people smarter than me, but it never turned into anything more than that.
It was on that trip that the seed was planted, I finally had the feeling of zeroing in on something worth the effort and decided what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to lean into my budding interests in tech and develop skills that would support myself and others... "I'm going to explore this tech thing and see where it takes me."