I'm almost 40 and sometimes I'm still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. I love to learn and do and make; I want to know a little bit about everything and know a lot about a few things. Sometimes my mind is a TED Talk and sometimes it's more like Ariel's collection of "stuff" in The Little Mermaid. I have a lot of pieces of knowledge and sometimes I don't know how they'll all fit together, but every day I try to find more connections and fashion something resembling a functioning human mind. I also love video games, photography, playing guitar and trying strange beer.

I started out brute forcing my old Blogger and Wordpress blog templates using HTML and CSS snippets I'd find on other sites and applied them with all the finesse of a bison rolling in mud. I applied my knowledge and experience in graphic design, limited as it was, to try and make something creative and unique. Years later I was intrigued by my friends' careers as programmers and web devs and their stories about overcoming interesting problems with code, so I started studying on my own to learn how to code "for real". I've worked through courses on Udemy, Udacity, freeCodeCamp and Khan Academy, to name a few. With a full-time job and a family to support I couldn't simply drop it all to enroll in a bootcamp that required my physical presence in a classroom every day, so I enrolled in Thinkful's Full-Stack Flex Program which allowed me to learn at home on my own time with the help of dedicated mentors and a healthy community of local students. I'm currently finishing the Thinkful course at my own pace while constantly supplementing with any available resource I can find to try and cement a comprehensive and concrete skill set in Front-End-focused Full-Stack web development.

I'm fascinated, and a little intimidated, by the idea that at some point a programmer had to program the programs that other programmers use to program programs. Computers and internet technology seem like futuristic alien constructs until you consider that at every step of the way, from Abacus to iPhone, a human being had to make and teach and refine how computers and software work. I'm endlessly excited by the thought that, in my own small way, I can be a part of that tradition by typing new and amazing things into existence with logic, creativity, and caffeine.