In January, 2000
I was a child and family therapist. I worked in the Intensive Outreach Unit of the DuPage County Health Department. I had just finished my master’s degree in 1999 and was excited about my first gig as a “real” therapist. We worked in pairs and did in-home family therapy to prevent children and adolescents from being hospitalized for suicidal, homicidal, or psychotic behavior. We had a small case load and I was working with some great therapists. Compared to my cohorts from my master’s program, I felt like I’d found a great gig.
But I had another job too. I was the “Teen Advice” guide at About.com. I got the job to help pay the bills, but also because I’ve always been into computers, and was especially interested in the Internet since my uncle introduced it to me back in 1994. This job involved HTML, which felt magical to me, and I found that the time I spent coding HTML was giving me energy. I wanted to dig deeper into this seemingly magical art.
So, 10 years ago, between client appointments, I would hide out in my car in random parking lots reading Java for Dummies. Then I would go home and (when Staci and Rose were sleeping) try out what I learned. I worked hard at it for a while, and would get excited when I could make a button or JSomethingErOther appear on my PC, but it wasn’t sinking in. Applets seemed cool, I guess, but what’s with this javac thing? And all of these rules about public and static?
[This year, I’m going to be blogging the year 2000, the year I started programming.]
