- be me
- 13 m
- don’t fit in at school. Ok at math and science but not much else. Not good at sports
- pick up guitar. Both parents are both musicians. It comes naturally
- 2008 financial crash happens
- parents do everything they can to convince me not to be a musician as the American dream crumbles around them
- start smoking weed and give up on school. Waste teenage years playing video games
- 19 now
- go to a state college for a year. Hate it and drop out
- parents threaten to kick me out if I don’t finish college. Finish an associates degree to appease them so I can have a place to record music
- get invited to play guitar in a funk band and move out
- quit the band and move into a house with more enthusiastic musicians
- we record music in the basement until 4am some nights
- i put a solo album out
- sole leaseholder of the new house hasn’t been paying rent and everyone gets evicted
- decide to live in a van and travel the country so i don’t have to find somewhere else to live
- end up in Los Angeles and spend most of my time playing for tips on the street
- burn through thousands of dollars I had saved up working in restaurants
- decide to travel to the tip of South America in a van and record music along the way
- started building out a new van at a friends house in New Mexico
- run out of money. Decide to continue on anyways
- somehow, bedbugs got in the van i invested the remainder of my savings into
- decided to to find work abroad and continue on
- worked and lived at a hostel in Cabo San Lucas for about 2 months
- best job I could find paid $5 a day. No more money. had to leave
- decided to move up to Washington State to live with a friend and save up money
- 25 now
- get a restaurant job to replenish my savings
- covid
- get laid off and receive a ton of unemployment compensation
- use the money to put out another album, hoping for some streaming income
- gets < 1000 plays. I finally listen to my parents and give up music as a viable career
- decide to go back to school. Good with computers
- 4.0 all my classes. Get accepted into UW CS
- move to Seattle to study
- break up with my first serious girlfriend at the time (painful)
- mfw 16/yo run circles around me academically
- get a few internships
- start building an app
- get back together with my ex
- attend a 10-day meditation retreat
- graduate in good standing
- 29 now
- economy sucks
- world is on fire
- ai is about to take all the jobs
- find myself questioning whether or not my successes were enough to outweigh my failures
- wondering whether or not i’ll be a serf to big tech AI overlords for the rest of my life
- have to look back on how far i’ve come. Have to remember to have hope