Full disclosure: I'm 35 years old.
Most of my life has been a series of failures in an upward trajectory. And I think that's pretty normal for most Americans.
I was always told when I was younger that I should just get a job -- any job -- because it's easier to find a better job when you already have a job.
So, being the trustworthy sap that I was, I got a job at 14 years old assisting developmentally disabled people to do simple manual labor jobs.
Ever since that time I've been working, with the occasional week or so off for simple holidays. So for more than half my life I've been working. And what did I have to show for it?
Well, my net worth is less now than what it was when I started working at 14. And not because I am making less -- because I had always been working upward in wages -- but because it was impossible to keep up with increasing cost of living while living paycheck-to-paycheck.
What a worthless thing to do!
I have a question for you:
Have you ever felt or been told that you had something exceptional? That maybe you weren't exactly like other people, and you had something pretty special to offer the rest of the world?
I know that kids are told that pretty often to keep their self-esteem up (which, by the way, practically always backfires), but I had been told this my whole life by various different people without prompting or expectation.
Mostly, this praise came from the fact that I seemed to have an inherent ability to design and create things that were appealing. Whether it was drawing or writing or music or games -- I could simply make things that other people wanted to engage with.
At first, this skill was interpreted as simple artistic ability.
Of course, I come from a part of the country that is rather quaint, semi-rural, and rather simple in scope and expectation. That is to say: if you're an "artist" in my home town, you will stand out like a sore thumb, because everyone else is "normal" (or at least pretending to be).
Today, the skills that I have would be defined as being in the field of "user experience/user interface", or UX/UI, but in the 90's in my home town, it just meant that I was an "artist".
What I'm saying is that my inclination for design and user experience was misinterpreted. You see, I am somewhat skilled as an artist, but there is no way that I can cut it in a market filled with the extremely talented people you can find doing freelance work on the Internet -- no way!
So I slogged along, depressed and disenfranchised. Thinking there was no place for me in the free market. Thinking that I would always be a slave to wasted potential, because there simply didn't seem to be an avenue where I could truly express my talents.
Enter: Game Development
One day, an old friend of mine from elementary school invited me to work with him in developing a game. We ended up making Blobfish Evolution.
After we made this game and released it to the market, we were both amazed at how it picked up.
It was downloaded by over a million people and we were making a steady stream of revenue. That in-and-of-itself was amazing, but for me it was the emotional recognition that I was capable of designing a user experience that people really responded to in a massive way.
I mean, how many people are there in the world who can say that over a million people have experienced a creative product of theirs that was completely of their own creation?
Answer: not many.
So I am humbled by this, and simultaneously I am inspired to learn more about this wonderful world of software development.
CodeFellows
As you've seen in earlier posts, I've been attending a coding academy called CodeFellows.
It's been an amazing experience so far. I have been learning so much about web development these last 4 weeks. It's kind of a trip to look back on what I knew a month ago vs what I know today. The program really is quite special.
But one thing that I experienced that was pretty unique throughout this whole thing was how people seemed to almost universally put me on a pedestal for my design and UX/UI abilities.
Within a week people were assuming that I'd had some kind of experience with coding before (I hadn't done much beyond styling blogs like Steemit and MySpace). People began asking me for advice on design and requesting that my projects be shown every morning during code review so everyone else could look at what I was doing.
People started calling me "The CSS Master", even the instructor. He even bowed to me in front of the whole class after a code review one morning, saying "I bow to the CSS Master."
Fellow students began acting like I had no business being among them, that I was somehow better than them in some way.
And to be honest, that attitude offended and upset me.
You see, I had come to this course to learn how to code just like everyone else. And I don't already know how to code -- I hadn't taken any classes and I don't "get" this stuff easily. I just have an easy time adopting styling and user interface languages because THOSE make a lot of sense to me. But things like Javascriptpt are as foreign to me as they are anyone else just starting out.
I was no better than anyone else at this stuff, I thought, and I didn't like how people were singling me out. It put a lot of pressure on me to succeed.
But over a bit of time I began to embrace that pressure and let it fuel me to work harder, study longer, and do the absolute best job I could do in the short time that I had.
Project Week: GhosTown
The last out of the 4 weeks that are scheduled for the 201 course is devoted to team projects.
This is a time where students must collaborate with each other and make a product of their own choosing using the skills that we've been taught the previous weeks.
My team was actually short one member, as there wasn't an even number of students in the class. Where other teams got 4 members, my team had only 3. In some ways this seems like a disadvantage, but I was VERY pleased with the team that I got (even though we were free to choose our own project, we were not free to choose our own teams), and I figured that a smaller team that could work together really well would create a better, more cohesive product than larger teams with more inner conflict.
So it was decided by one of my teammates to make a game. I, naturally, agreed.
As we discussed what the game was going to be, I discovered an image of the product forming in my mind. We had started with a text-based adventure game about orcs and elves, but that really didn't appeal to me -- I knew we could do something more, something special.
You see, I didn't just want to make something "good" or "passable" -- I wanted to make the best project in my class -- I wanted to make the best project that a 201 class had EVER MADE. My goal was to make something that the staff would hold onto as an example for prospective students or current 201 students. I wanted teachers in the future to show my project and say "This is something that a 201 team of just 3 people made. So don't underestimate what you are capable of."
I wanted to re-set the bar.
So we worked. We got in early and stayed late. I designed a splash page that would really set the tone for the rest of the project and keep my team inspired and motivated. And thats exactly what happened! We were driven and excited by our project. We worked hard on it partly because we wanted to do a good job on the assignment, but also because we simply wanted to see this game realized on a personal level.
People were blown away by the stuff that I was designing, and the way I was able to animate the game and manipulate the code to do juuuuust what I wanted. People didn't know that what I was doing was possible given the tools we'd been given the previous 3 months.
Presentation
We presented the project last Friday.
The reception was amazing. I heard from more than a few people that it was the best project of the class, and that our class was probably the best 201 class ever. So that was really good.
The co-owner of the academy tweeted about our game.
Check this @codefellows Code 201 final project, made by 3 students who didn't know how to code 4 wks ago: http://ghostowngame.com/game.html
At first I thought he probably just tweeted about EVERY project for every class, then I checked and noticed that he hadn't tweeted about ANY other project for ANY other class.
Clearly, my goal of standing out amongst the school administration has been achieved.
A Fascinating Turn of Events
After the presentation, a woman I'd never met approached me to talk about the presentation my team had made.
She said it was the most amazing project she'd ever seen from CodeFellows, and quickly advised me to apply for a lead designer position at a top Seattle tech company.
She said that she HATES it when talent like mine goes to waste.
Woah... What vindication!
Then she asked a question that I had never though before that I would be asked: "Now, the salary starts at $160k... is that ok?"
My blood turned cold and I almost fainted. Here I was, not even technically finished with the 201 course at my coding school, and someone is coming around trying to recruit me for a fantastically paying job? Saying that I had talent that she couldn't stand seeing go to waste?
I feel like I've finally found a place where I can not only belong, but excel!
I've never been more excited about the opportunities before me!
Wish me luck, my friends :D