Technology is my chosen vehicle
Living life as your stereotypical hidden-homosexual white pentecostal child growing up in the 90’s was…no different than any of my peers; regardless of race, orientation, or gender. That is the honest truth. It is said that unwanted rain falls on the just and the unjust. It has also been said that All is Drama; Drama Drama Drama. It doesn’t matter who you and what your current caste in society is, we all face dimensions of the same basic set of turmoil. This is the common human experience. I believe that is what can allow us to finally move forward towards a better future where we each according to our ability, help to make a world we cannot wait to share with others.
Hello, my name is Brandon J. Bradshaw, Chief Technology Officer of GamerAmmo, and I thank you for taking the opportunity to allow me to share some of why I am here in this position today.
I grew up in a trailer park that saw no meaningful reduction in crime until a family member of the Centurions, a rival chapter to the Hell’s Angels, moved two trailers down from my family’s own. This was the first time that I learned that there existed families other than those forged by blood. I have since come to understand that in being born to this world, there is the family you are given, and the family that you choose. Oftentimes, these two sets overlap. I believe that a given individual will sacrifice more for something they have chosen, rather than something they were simply given. Now possessing children of my own, I will endeavour to brace myself for the potential impact when my own kids may or may not always include me in their “chosen” family.
Maturing in the crucible of Baker Mobile Home Park, winters were particularly tough. Fall and winter, like some of my compatriots, are my favorite times of year. When the wind really got some momentum behind it, I could see the layers of plastic over the windows inflate, then deflate with the ebb and flow of old man winter’s yowling. I would listen to this wind howl through our home, while doing school work in the closet we converted to be my bedroom once I was older and just wanted my own space. I would think about why I was in the situation I found myself. First, I thought that it was because my father and mother never sought to seek any form of higher education.
My dad was a mechanic of some two decades at the time. He had a tough, technical, physical job, and was rewarded well for doing it well. He did not believe in taking advantage of the fact that the majority of folks looking to get their car fixed knew little of the magic under their own car’s hood. From time to time, he would move to a more advantageous position at another shop. When he did so, I saw the value of an honest reputation. Invariably, wherever my father hung his wrenches, there too “his” customers went as well.
My mother was a homemaker who had given up her job when I was born. Back in the day, there was a time she worked at the Federal Center downtown, working with an early Punch-card system mainframe. I was happy that by the time I began to use computers, we had thankfully invented the 5 ¼” Floppy. My mother was honest in her feelings to a fault, and still is to this day. I took comfort in knowing exactly where things stood around her, and when she told me she had confidence in something I was currently attempting, I believed the strength of her conviction.
My parents provided for my siblings and I to the best of their ability, and thanks to providence and the support of our church community, we…got…by. I have infrequently known hunger, and I have known to watch out for the spots in the kitchen we couldn’t step on, for fear they would collapse. This formative life taught me something that I now know. A truth I have since transferred from my head, to my heart:
Giving the best you’ve got don’t mean squat unless you know where you’re going.
What we define as the future exists in no realistic way, shape or form outside of the realms of informed and ignorant imagination. To the contrary the future is something that constantly occurring to us in the rolling moment of “now” we commonly refer to as the present. Until we pick up the skill of pragmatic foresight, and then apply it by building things into ourselves not because we need them now, but because we’ll need them then; success will only ever be a metric of how well one juggles cats.
That winter, I knew that I wanted more. More for my family, more for myself, and thanks to my upbringing and personal philosophy, more for the world. Technology is my chosen vehicle for what I thought would get us there. And that is what I am here at GamerAmmo. A proper vision of what tech we need to adopt, whose shoulders to stand on, and efficiency in leveraging those two strengths to maneuver us into the proper lane for the future.
I’m iolair@gamerammo.
Once again, I thank you for letting me share some of my blockchain with you.
