First Question!!!

People!! Someone used the little 'Ask me a question box'.

I'm stoked, and Sister Secret of Secret Underpants, you get the distinction of being my first askee!!

Alright, so the question was:

What did you want to be when you grew up? Are you doing anything related to your childhood dream now?

This is actually kind of an interesting question...

When I was a kid, I lived in Africa. I tended to be very liberal in my approach to people, and was a huge animal lover.

I had a pet dog, and we'd spend hours walking along a stream near our home, looking for animals and invariably coming home stinky and covered in mud. Around the age of 8 or 9 I got very interested in birdwatching as well, which didn't really help my social skills much, but I loved it, and it allowed me to visit a lot of places which people normally don't go to.

Up through the middle of high school, my dream was to become either a game warden or some kind of ornithologist, nature conservator or something like that.

I think it important to add, that through most of my formative years, my father worked as a systems engineer. He's good at what he does, has an aptitude for it, and worked really hard for his company and to provide for our family. The downside of all of that was that he wasn't around very much. There were times he'd be at work for days at a time. In fact, my very first day at school, I remember his pager going off right as we got to the big hall where all the new students and their parent met to be divided into their classes. He had to rush out, taking my mother and siblings with him, and left me to face my first day alone.

I didn't so much grow to resent him, but I was not a fan of computers.

I learned to program when I was about 8, and actually really liked it. I mashed it with my hobbies and did several assignments for school for which I wrote programs to identify and track birds.

In my 10th year of school, I entered a Computer Olympiad, and while several kids from my school scored very well in the competition, I was by far the youngest who excelled. Most of the other kids were in their 12th year.

BUT I WAS NOT GOING TO GET INTO COMPUTERS!!

Shortly before my mission I worked at McDonalds, and I think it worth mentioning that McDonalds New Zealand is significantly nicer place to work that McDonalds USA. I worked there about 9 months, and probably would have been promoted up through the ranks, where it not for the fact of my impending departure to knock on doors.

I left on mission, convinced that I wanted to break into the hospitality industry, either getting into hotel management, or the culinary arts.

This was helped by the fact that BYU Hawaii had a degree in Hospitality Management, and based on my final results in High School, had offered me a full tuition scholarship.

It stayed that way until I was almost done with my mission, and a member offered me a book called "A Gathering of Saints" which told the story of Mark Hoffman. It was a riveting story, and I finished it with a strong desire to pursue a career in law.

I got done with mission, came over to the US, and just like I had been told to do, got married and then set about pursuing my education.

I looked into law, but 7 years was far too long.

Then I looked into architecture, but that required 7 years as well.

The place I was working dealt with developing and producing products and I got a hankering to try out a career in Engineering, which interestingly enough was where my father started out.

I began college, and took an Engineering Introduction course. It was interesting... Based on my abilities with math and science, I did rather well in the class, but I just couldn't enjoy it.

I should add that at this time, I was Mr. Uber Mormon, trying to be as righteous as I could, and had in the process begun producing kids, left and right.

One day at work, a younger employee asked if I knew how to program, and when I said I did, asked if I could help him with a homework assignment from school.

I did, and I LOVED IT!!!

I quit my job shortly thereafter, and went to work for the LDS Church. And at the same time I started attending a small technical school and got a certification in Programming.

My career path with the LDS Church was interesting... This will likely be a dead giveaway to them as to my identity, but...

I spent 9 months working as a Seamstress, and yes... I am a dude!

Sister Secret may appreciate it, but those 9 months were spent sewing Secret Underwear!!

From there I moved to the cutting area of the plant, worked my way up, and then finally got a job in the IT department as a glorified secretary.

I continued up into tech support, all the while working on my degree, until I reached a point where I had graduated, had completely lost my testimony, and was unable to secure a position in software development within the organization itself.

So I quit.

It's also worth noting at this point, that I graduated after spending 7 years at college!

I worked for myself for a few months, and then got on with the organization for whom I work now.

I'm a web developer, and work mostly on internal applications for my employer.

I love it, but since leaving Mormonism, I've also returned to many of the environmentalist type views I held as a kid.

I'd still love to work in Nature Conservation, and perhaps as time goes on, I can guide my career towards that.