Hello world!

Although I had the good fortune of being born in the 1980s, a time when computer technology hit the streets and everyone was talking about Apple, I was born just east of the Iron Curtain where apples only grew on trees. There, each of us unfortunate future comrades were programmed, not without the fear of God, to always wonder what Big Brother would think of us should we wonder too far from the herd.

After a revolution that was everything but revolutionary, the spirit of the herd continued forward toward a new and uneventful millennium. And I, bent by strong opinions, went to law school. There, I got a degree in public administration. I know. I know! It was not very exciting, nor was it at all fascinating. It was exactly what was expected of me. And for that matter, it was exactly what I was taught to expect of myself. The spirit of the times dictated, as it did across the world, that artists everywhere were always and definitely… starving. And I, surely, needed to secure my next meal ticket if I wanted to get anywhere in the world. I was raised, as many people are, in the spirit of fear until I was not! I made a decision. I choose to break free of those chains and to literally move on and move forward, westward! I left my country and the shadows that still haunt its mentality. And, voila! Here I am.

Along the way, I have always had one constant guiding love of drawing. The passion for illustration that I discovered as a child became my joy through adolescence and, later in life, my window to curiosity. It taught me the significance of exploration. Ultimately, it led me to the digital canvas. And here, I was recently most impressed! A natural evolution of things, and a little bit of luck, led me to, yet, a newer place and, yet, a newer language. I found a wide world without boundary that could be crafted by my own imagination. I wanted to learn!

At first I was afraid and, like that catchy song, I was petrified! Looking underneath the folds, I was confronted by a new technical world that had logic far different from the several human languages that I had learned along the way. It seemed complex and complicated and it was complex and complicated! And as others before me had thought of people like me, I almost believed I could never grasp its method.

But, I fell in love! The moment I saw my very first “hello world” glowing on the screen in an html file, I found my voice. I was hooked! I began to play with the html file. I added a few pictures, changed a few fonts in css and discovered that I could draw in a very new way. Boom! This wow moment of realization fueled my drive to learn computer language. It opened a new chapter in my life where I could explore my curiosity without limitation.

The thrill of seeing my work come to life in front of the whole world in seconds is electrifying. It is the feeling I get from a book I cannot put down for days. It is the captivation I feel from a song I cannot stop listening to for hours. It is the passion of creativity that I discovered as a child and have now rediscovered in a whole new form. It is the craft that elevates each of us into a different world of endless possibility. And here, in the script, I found a place to share my own personality with the world.

Now, I timidly work at the code daily in order to learn and learn in order to create. I encounter problems that take hours to fix always hoping for ever growing skill. I sit transfixed at my keyboard thinking of nothing else but the solution, the elusive solution, which is hidden within the millions and billions of bits of information that often feel like the very folds of human history! And each time I find that little bit of code that fixes the problem; I encounter my very own moment of revelation. Aha! Eureka. I am a fixer of problems within this universe. I am chosen. Praise the gods of the internet! I smile. The thrill of the challenge drives me forward wanting to learn more and to do more.

I now feel like a child that will fight the algorithm dragons within mountains of complexity. I push forward into a never ending story of trial and error leaving far behind the eyes and opinions of others! It is never too late to change your path. It is never too late to break the chains of limitation. I look forward to making my mark on the blank canvas of a truly brave new world shaped by a liberated human possibility.