The first introduction I got into tech I got came in the form of an Atari 800XL computer I got when I was barely a teenager. It looked like a normal computer, with a floppy drive, keyboard, and monitor. Today, I have fond memories of hours upon hours playing Summer Games, a game that might look pretty pathetic when compared to today’s titles.

(You can see a screenshot of one of my favorite events on the game, diving, here.)

Of course, I also got a lot of exposure to computers in high school back in the 1990s, when I wrote articles for my school’s newspaper, then I ended up taking electives in computer programming in my senior year as I fell more in love with technology. Back then, schools started your “development” education with BASIC.

Right around that time, I also had gotten a personal computer at home, moving on from my Atari days. That was when I discovered an underground world of the computer bulliten board systems (BBS).

This world was highly attractive to me as a young woman who had a hard time communicating with others verbally. I was extremely shy around my classmates, and some of them even thought I was a snob because I didn’t socialize a lot with everyone in my class. Quietly, I looked up to the popular girls for years and had wanted so badly to be friends with them. But I was just awkward and didn’t fit in with them, so I kept to myself mostly. I eventually did make friends with a group of kids, some who later went to MIT, Harvard, and other Ivy League schools.

Though I would have never considered myself dumb or an idiot, I did not apply myself in school like they had. However, because I hung out with them and wore glasses (it doesn’t take much, does it?), people assumed I was smart as hell. But this girl was failing gym. Not smart.

So, I found the message boards on a BBS, and I suddenly felt like I had a place to express myself socially. They made me feel safe enough to be myself behind my computer screen, and I could say what I was thinking without the looks of people judging me for being weird or awkward.

I quickly made a lot of friends among a group of guys one might consider hackers—or at least hacker-adjacent at the bare minimum. After high school, I started talking to them more, eventually attending their parties. At these parties, I met some of those most interesting people I’d come across so far in my life, and some of them I’m still friends with today.

That group soon got bigger, accepting more people into their social circle. That was around the time TDKEB was formed, which was a group of young women who formed a close friendship in that world. It started with my two close friends, Kristen and D, then soon added Erica and Brittany. (And sometimes Laura, as we would so often say.)

I’ll talk more about TDKEB in the future because I have a lot more to say about that. But, for now, we’ll just leave it at that.

My tech life evolved after that when I received an associate’s degree in computer programming in my early twenties. After graduation, I started working in tech support, yet I never seemed to move beyond that role, so I quickly got frustrated and started working in other careers—beauty, tech, publishing, and security. (As I write this first blog post, I’m currently a shift supervisor at a central station for an alarm dispatching company.)

During my time in tech support, I met many people who mentored me and inspired me to deepen my knowledge in tech. As I’m approaching mid-life, I sincerely regret not running with that inspiration when I was much younger. But, as I approached fifty years old, I did attend a virtual bootcamp, where I learned to develop in JS, Python, and C#. I completed a couple of development internships after finishing that program, but my limited knowledge and lack of professional experience held me back from pursuing employment as a developer. I knew I had so much more to learn and accomplish.

So, here we are today.

I started this blog as a way to challenge myself to continue that education, develop my writing skills further, and find a way to connect with others who might be struggling to transition into employment as a developer.

Do any Google search, and you’ll see that there’s a real demand for developers. However, getting your foot in that door is much harder than the high-dollar bootcamps want you to believe. I’m not saying they aren’t valuable, but you have to do more than the bare minimum. And you have to do more than what they expect of you. That’s evidenced in the high number of bootcamp and college graduates who either never find a job in tech or are still struggling even to get interviews for a chance.

Yet people do it every day. It’s tough, but it’s possible. And that’s what I hope to prove.