About Me
My name is Jim. I make my living as an engineer, but in my free time, I am all over the place. I have a tendency to bounce in-between different hobbies. I can get super focused on something, and learn all about it, just move on to the next thing. I enjoy being physically active, and I am currently training for a marathon.
At the ripe age of 33, I've begun to look back at my life and wish I had better documentation of all my former pursuits since I was never that big into social media. The timing of this realization just happens to correspond to my most recent interest - web development. This site is my sandbox.
Learn by doing
That is the "Why", but this post is supposed to be About Me. I grew up in a small town with fewer than 500 people, and I graduated high school with 13 people, most of which I spent every day since Pre-K with. My dad is a retired farmer and my mom works for a company that sells seed and fertilizer. With that said, my childhood was filled technology. My dad is big into computers, and he actually bought a partial T1 line for our home to get us off 56K internet back in the day. We shared a passion for technology and building computers that has stuck with me to adulthood. However, my 'gamer' side was more or less hidden from society growing up. It just was not as popular and mainstream as it is today. That could be because I was from a rural area where still today it is nearly impossible to get internet faster than 2Mbps. (Pretty much Starlink's target audience.) But when I wasn't spending thousands of hours playing DF:LW, MOHAA, CS, or competing in vCoD and CoD2 - I was playing sports. I played football, baseball, and basketball growing up. I was always at some type of practice, and I'm not quite sure how my mom did it.
Fast forward to college, I didn’t really know what I wanted to study. Someone told me I should try engineering because I really liked physics in high school. I didn't really have a good grasp on what an engineer was at the time, but I chose mechanical engineering because I was told it covered a little bit of everything. And I kind of just went with it. I didn’t have too much of an issue with the curriculum (except thermo - thanks Dr. Gonthier). The hardest part was balancing personal life and school responsibilities. I was fortunate enough to not have to work throughout college. However, I did like to drink. A lot. And as far as physical health, I don’t think I ever stepped inside of a gym during college. By the time I graduated, I had gained a lot of weight from that lifestyle of partying, eating like crap, and neglecting sleep.
I moved on to my career, and I continued to drink and eat poorly. I got up to around 270 lbs. Until one day, I hit a rock bottom that set me on a self-improvement path that I am still on today. In this blog, I plan to talk about how I dug out of that rut and got everything back on track. I'll talk about my setbacks, what I learned from them, and struggles that I still have.
As I get older, it becomes more and more apparent that we as humans change over time. Both individually and as a society. I am still learning new things and adapting. I plan to document the new 'self-improvement' things I try as well as new hobbies, interest, projects, and travel.