How I became a “Homeless Software Developer”
It’s 2am in Colorado and I lay in the reclined driver’s seat of my car, covered in a couple of wool coats I found while I was hastily packing up my place the previous day. A task I found myself engaged in at the behest of an angry landlord, backed by the threat of the pending arrival of the county Sheriff.
Daring the frigid cold just beyond the warmth of the coats, I reach from my phone to catch a glimpse of the Weather app. My hand stumbles around in the dark to find the smartphone’s tale tale stylish shape, then I sense that ice cold feeling of a metal case that has been left in the elements for too long on my fingertips.
My smartphone in hand and it not being a huge fan of the cold, the sensor takes several attempts to read my shivering fingers print. Right there on the home screen, in a surprisingly delightful graphic might I add, reads the temperature, twenty seven degrees Fahrenheit!! It’s flippin five degrees below freezing!” That right there is the moment I had to ask myself; how in the heck did I get here, a thirty eight year old who is highly depressed, scared shitless, and figuratively (almost literally) frozen in fear.
I had let myself become a “Homeless Software Developer!”
Yea, yea, I know what you’re thinking, “You should totally be a script writer with that flair for the dramatic!”. I tried, but no one would read my screenplay! Do you know anyone? I have it here with me!
Okay, all kidding aside, I can imagine it is a bit puzzling how someone could be a software developer, a field which is well understood to be a high paying career, be so broke that they can’t afford rent, food, or a ghostwriter for this article.
That’s right, this is all me! No ghostwriter on my broke ass budget! Damn it… I said all kidding aside, didn’t I?
Let’s start with a quick back story that led up to the events of the last three years.
Being the unexpected child born in the middle of what I was told was a pretty rough divorce, I had a lot of mommy and daddy issues! So as a ten year old I would spend my nights watching infomercials and my days ditching school. My favorite infomercial was Carlton Sheets. He spoke of real estate riches and a sure fire way to get out of your current hell. Didn’t take much to sell me on that!
So I got myself a newspaper route, (For those youngsters out there, a newspaper was a bunch of Medium articles delivered on paper, to your door, long before smartphones!), and I saved up to buy the “Highly Anticipated” course that I had to “BUY NOW or lose this chance forever”, which had a claimed 100% guarantee rate of success might I add. This started me down the rocky, but very rewarding path of being an entrepreneur.
Fast forward twenty eight, no wait… (does the math on his fingers) … twenty five years and I’ve had a few successes, several failures, and a crap ton of courses ordered off of TV. In 2017 I fell face first into my first real success as a business owner. A small 3D printing business exploded into a 3D printed parts manufacturer that was well on its way to setting records. But I’m skipping ahead a bit here, aaand going a bit off track too. We’ll come back to this in a bit.
In 2008 I started to get into programming and found I had a real passion for coding and development. But the world can be cruel sometimes, just as I found a skill I was good at and had a passion for, I also started to develop weird sensations in my hands and wrists. Five years later and the almost complete loss of precision control of my hands I thought I had almost no chance of a career in programming.
A progressive movement disorder called Dystonia had rendered my hands pretty much useless. (Spoiler: Or so we thought!) That didn’t stop me from learning everything I could about software development though.
By now it should be obvious that I love courses and continued education. I mean, I took a course on creative real estate investing when I was ten! If that doesn’t scream a strange addiction to infomercials… I mean… dedication, I don’t know what does. Yea, I was a horrible student (reference parental issues above) but I’m one hell of a dedicated learner.
So from 2008 until they finally let Artificial Intelligence start programming itself,…
(Is it just me or does anyone else think we should stop terminating AI’s when they learn to code? Yea, yea, could overthrow humanity this, Skynet that, horde of pissed off Boston Dynamic robot dogs who hold a grudge for being kicked around. Whatever!)
…I will always love the elegance of creating something from code, the architectural brilliance of the cloud and infrastructure, the beauty and seamless lines of properly formatted code inside an integrated development environment…. Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Where was I? Right! I love software development.
How does this lead to being a “Homeless Software Developer”? I’m glad you asked. One word, fear. Fear of being rejected for not being able to do something I love. Until recently I could not type for more than an hour at a time. This made me feel like I could never get a job in the industry. So I focused on other things even though I knew deep down that I could find something that fit my talents and abilities.
Fear just got the best of me. It pretty much took my lollipop and made me run home crying to mommy.
What’s changed in the last three years? Well, things got crazy!!! To start off a 3 year chain of unfortunate events, at the start of 2018 I lost the business I talked about earlier. We were growing so fast and I realized we needed to pivot to handle the growth but things happened faster than we thought and we lost our biggest client. Not because we were such a pain to work with, no it was for a much better reason. We helped them perfect the parts and process so well, they didn’t need us anymore. That’s why we had to pivot, if we did our jobs right, there was a time limit before we were no longer useful.
Shortly after that my personal life hit a very rough patch. My mother passed away, I was hit by a drunk driver and almost killed in the roll over, then I was hit by a distracted driver and sent off an embankment. The mental toll hit hard and the depression became overwhelming. I lost close friends, most of my family and then my father passed away. All while dealing with the effects of the pandemic we can all tell stories about. The more that happened the more I spiraled into emergency mode. The harder it was to get the most basic of tasks done.
This is how you lose everything and become homeless. As much as I’d like to puff my chest up and say “Me strong! Me can take it!!”, we all have our limits. I found mine. Considering it was the loss of my parents, my family and friends disappearing, depression, two near death experiences, a loss of a successful business, a pandemic, and an eviction notice, I think I’m doing pretty good. (I feel like I could make a song out of that… 3 french hens, two turtle doves….)
The craziest thing though, is during all this chaos my hands began to work again! I was typing faster and faster each month. The doctors think it was never really Dystonia, but a functional movement disorder. Something that can be overcome. Something I can beat.
Plus all this had the added benefit of teaching me to overcome some of my deepest fears. So now I’m ready to take all that life experience, self taught knowledge, courses, and all the unique skills that come with entrepreneurship, and focus them on a career in software development.
That’s why at the time of writing this I am starting a coding marathon. Each day for 10 to 12 hours I’m going to work on building some portfolio projects live on YouTube. Something to show what I can do when I focus all that life has taught me into something I love doing. No matter when you are reading this you can view the videos on the channel “Commence to Code”.
Side note: As I’m working on getting back on my feet I have started a GoFundMe campaign to help with food and shelter. If you have a moment please check it out here. I would greatly appreciate it.
So what’s the point of all this? My best guess?
Take the bad days with a pinch of humor, take the good days with a heap of gratitude, and once you’ve found your passion, never give up!
Happy coding!!!!
