Twelve Years as a Digital Hermit
Reader Advisory: This post is sarcastic, and a bit raw. Those without a sense of humor, or an aversion to hard facts, venture no further. Also, these opinions are my own; subject to change, etc, etc.
It has been confusing, even for me at times, to live my life being fascinated with computer technology from a very early age, yet having nothing to do with major social media platforms since around 2012 - even as the rest of the world became utterly infatuated with it, apparently seeing it as some great technical marvel (lol).
From being an obsessive gamer as a child, breaking games with my GameShark, to studying topics no 10-year-old has any business studying (denotational semantics, anyone?), to building my own machines and making stupid little HTML websites, hacking MySpace and feeling proud, and just generally being the neighborhood’s goto free IT support (when people still spoke with their neighbors).
Then there was trying to teach myself C++ at 13, which I gave up, for reasons that should be obvious to those still clutching to some sanity. Later, due to less than favorable economic conditions and a mountain of responsibility in my early adulthood, having children at a young age, I lost hope that I might ever do anything professionally with technology, working whatever job I could find, for whatever wage they would pay. My personal favorite was digging through folks’ garbage for the purpose of “recycling”.
