Originally scheduled to see the light of day for the first time on July 4th, I give my mom - and the doctors - a scare by threatening to introduce myself to the world a good two weeks early.
After administering mom a treatment to keep me at bay for a few more days, the docs dourly watch as the day comes and goes and I decide to switch tactics, now refusing to come out of hiding.
I grumpily show my face more than 72 hours later (sorry Mom). Since then, my time-keeping skills have only kept swinging wider across the pendulum.
While my mother works during the day, my baby-sitters make sure to indoctrinate me in the art of Halloween dress-up, unplugged karoake skills, and a string of other miscellaneous toddler skills.
Mom and Dad graciously entertain me while I obsess over the latest What's New Scooby Doo episode, Minnie Mouse-inspired accessories, and Hardy Boy mystery novels.
As a 12-year-old, I'm not allowed on Myspace.com (yes that Myspace), so alternative ways to entertain myself via computers are a must - after all, it's the golden age of Windows XP.
A middle school friend soon introduces me to Neopets.com and Neopet "PetPages", and I'm off to the races, during an era of Neopets that's come to be known for its thriving early 00s internet girl culture. Learning to web design through sites like Lissa Explains It All and by creating free graphic-resource websites for fellow (adolescent) designers fuel the first embers of love for coding.
I make my way across the mid 2000s hosting landscape, from Neopets to Freewebs.com, then to a .co.uk extension (the .io of the 00s), and finally to a series of hosted subdomains, where my graphic and web design aspirations gradually fizzle out as I shift gears to try to keep afloat (literally - coach keeps me on JV swimming all four years, likely for good reason) through high school.
I apply Fall ED to Carleton College in Minnesota, beginning my college journey and meeting some amazing humans, including my best friend, along the way.
Sometime in 2014, I end up choosing Computer Science as a major after taking one CS course at a time and realizing I haven't imploded yet from the amount of theory proof homework assigned at each turn.
Mom and Dad fly out to Minnesota for the first time, just in time for graduation!
Following graduation, we embark on a 4-day road trip from MN back to CA, checking out various sights and sounds along the way. We stumble across this helicopter ride service just off the highway a few minutes into the Dakota Badlands.
After 15 minutes of cajoling, we convince Dad to gulp down his fear of heights long enough to hop on.
After a 3-month Fall batch at the Recurse Center in the months following graduation, I accept my first full-time position as a backend dev at Rent the Runway and move to New York City.
After 2 and 1/2 years in New York City, I pack my shoe-filled bags and do a 4000-mi. cross-country road trip. It's breathtaking and wonderful, and I am humbled at how much of a homecoming it is, in every sense of the word.