Since I’ve arrived here at my new home, I’ve gotten two questions more than any other: How do I like Modesto so far? And just who the heck am I, anyway?
I guess the best way to say it is that I’m a child of technology. I grew up in Central Florida, a region that was almost impossible to comfortably live in before the invention of air conditioning. When I was very young, my father bought the family a home computer (1982 or so), which set me on the 25-year path of computer geekdom that brought me to this point in my life.. and in fact brought Kristi and I together and made the move to Modesto possible.
So I’m basically a humble acolyte of A/C electricity.
My original background, dating back to the early 1990’s, is in computer technology. I’ve been programming computers since I was ten, and started my professional life doing database and web development at Lockheed. That took me to UNIX systems and network administration at Verizon and other places, several years of working weekends in Tampa patiently waiting for computers to catch on fire (and watching DVDs the rest of the time). It was pretty good money and pretty easy work. The only problem was, I was miserable doing it.
Not long after I turned 30 in 2001, I made the hardest decision of my life: I walked away from my tech career to do what I’d always wanted to do, write professionally. It’d been my dream since high school; in over a decade, I’d accomplished exactly nothing towards achieving it, and enough was enough. So I took the leap, spent a year doing volunteer PR work for the American Red Cross, occasionally writing for magazines and building the foundation of a freelance marketing and copywriting business.
I’ve kept my tech skills sharp – they prove extremely useful as a writer, since so very few writers have technical backgrounds. I built my own websites, wrote my own client invoicing and contact management software, and have gotten the business to a point where I can – and in recent weeks have – run the whole operation from a laptop.
It’s been hard work through a lot of tough times, but this year I made more than I did as a Lockheed programmer, and very near what I was making in my first year as a UNIX admin. Not bad when you figure that statistically, only a very few percent of working writers make more than $20,000 a year.
So now I sit at home at my new desk and do pretty much what I did in 2001: work hard (and bill hard) when the situation calls for it, and watch movies most of the rest of the time. Only now, I’m running the occasional load of laundry and enjoying the company of the woman I love at the same time. Really not a bad deal when you think about it.
That takes me to the second question: how do I like Modesto so far?
Right now I’m enjoying it a lot. Orlando is overcrowded, noisy and massively congested; it takes an hour to get anywhere from anywhere, and I promise you won’t enjoy the trip. Working portably from home with clients across North America lets me enjoy all the upsides of small town life without most of the downsides. So again, a life of technology.. thanks to the Internet, email, cell phones and unlimited long distance plans, I can run my circus from just about anywhere in America with very little interruption.
In the end, though, I’m happy in Modesto because Kristi’s happy here. She makes the town a new home for me.