In April, 2000
On the day before my 26th birthday, I took the day off to interview at Edventions. I drove the long (painful) drive to Skokie (from Warrenville) and found my way to someone named Irv. Craptastic! Irv’s the flippin’ founder and CEO! He had me sit with one of his content editors who sorta quizzed me on HTML, online content editing, and general (non-techie) web knowledge. Then I spent some time in conversation with Irv. Wow, this felt right. The building was this cool 2 story, marble-y old building on the corner of Bronx and Dempster, and for some reason, it just felt like home to me, especially with Irv’s vision for the company. It all felt very alive and vibrant, especially compared to any previous job I’d ever had.
At the end of our conversation, Irv matched the combined income of my day job and side gig, plus a little more, and offered me the job. I accepted it. We shook hands. I got in my car and drove to a gas station. Then I got out of the car and called Staci. Then I called my family, friends, and other people. My life was changing, and although I grew tired of all the times my life changed when I was growing up (we moved around a lot), I had grown to relish change as an adult. I was thrilled to be involved in Edventions, a real, live dot-com startup!
Later that week, I met with my team at work and let them know I was leaving. They were surprised that I would walk away from the field of mental health. Interestingly, some of my clients were less surprised, and encouraged me in my decision. I’ve never regretted or second guessed my decision to change careers, and later that month, that’s exactly what I did. I was building starship.com (don’t bother going there now) using an open source content management system called egrail. This was the first of a series of projects where I found myself in over my head. The work was great. The commute sucked. But it was totally worth it.
[This year, I’m going to be blogging the year 2000, the year I started programming.]
