Keep Saturdays Sacred: Preface
As of the time I am writing this post, I am 18.28 years old. I have been using a computer for at least ten years now. I have been programming for at least six years. There are obviously many factors that have contributed to my knowledge of technology, but the one that has stuck with me the most is my desire to experiment with something new. It can be summed up in a sentence: Never stop exploring.
Ever since I can remember, I have been exploring the world around me, conducting experiments to try and understand it. These experiments are not the ones you see in scientific journals or at school. My experiments were for fun, for curiosity’s sake. One day I would take apart a radio, another I would tape up our carpet to create roads for my toy cars (some marks are still visible). I could not focus on one project, I needed many of them. Immediately after I had become satisfied with my work, I abandoned what I was doing and started something else.
Unfortunately, now that I am older, I see less and less of that in myself, as well as those around me. Faced with burnout last year, I told myself I would stick to only 1 or 2 side projects, and finish those before I started others. My curiosity started to dwindle, and I spent my time reading comments on reddit, or watching YouTube videos. Motivation was running low. I watched as those around me spent their weekends on Netflix, or going out to parties with friends.
I needed a change.
What I was missing was support from other like-minded people, curious and ambitious. So one day in the spring, I decided that I would go find others like me. An hour before the event was supposed to start, I registered on Meetup.com and joined a small WordPress meetup that was having it’s first meeting. And so I attended, being the youngest (by far) out of the other four there. It being my first such event, I was awkward and afraid. I didn’t feel like I fit in.
Later that spring, and into summer I went to a few more meetup events (not with the same original group), but at each one I was the youngest there, and it was not unlikely that I would feel patronized at least once. I had become concerned that there weren’t like-minded people around me at all, that all the “cool kids” were hacking away in San Francisco.
Over the summer, I worked on YSFlight Headquarters with a few other young, tech-savvy individuals. We were building something I was truly proud of, and still are to this day. The work I was doing became my escape from the corporate grind at CPS during the day. Since joining the YSFlight community back in 2006, I became close with my fellow virtual pilots, even though I had never met them face-to-face. They had a love for aviation, but also enjoyed technology (and some even made addons). I realized that I wanted a community of friends just like that.
As I started school at IIT, I had been thinking of how I could make my experience as great as high school has been. I wanted to find friends who shared the same interests as me, but also had a wide range of opinions on subjects I had never heard of. Then it hit me. I started to bring together my desires with what I could learn from those around me, coming up with a network that would fill the void I had been in for so long. I felt my curiosity and motivation coming back. I was like a young Columbus again.
Today, I am announcing my idea. A plan to keep exploration going, to fuel new experiments and experiences. This is going to be exciting. I hope you will join me.
I will be announcing the idea in the second part of this post. Stay tuned.