{
  "eras": [
    {
      "index": 1,
      "id": "era-1",
      "label": "The Promise",
      "entries": [
        {
          "title": "Another layer",
          "text": "My brother is nine years older, and the Commodore 64 was his. I couldn't have been older than six the first time I watched him manipulate the code — I didn't understand what he was doing, only that there was another layer to the machine that most people never saw. That feeling never left me. I chased it for years, through every machine that followed: the C64 itself, dug out of a closet once it was already old technology; a family IBM XT, still just BASIC; a 486 that brought Windows and QBasic. Different systems, different syntax, same instinct. Computers were not just appliances to me; they were systems I could explore, understand, and eventually bend to my own purposes.",
          "photo": "/images/Commodore_64_Keyboard.jpg"
        },
        {
          "title": "Reading ahead",
          "text": "I read constantly and learned quickly. School came easily, and I was used to being ahead of my age cohort. That confidence was real, but it also made me impatient.",
          "photo": "/images/kid.jpg"
        },
        {
          "title": "NCSSM and the early internet",
          "text": "At NCSSM, curiosity felt normal. IRC became part record store, part social world, and part technical playground. I downloaded music, wrote scripts, and ripped borrowed CDs."
        },
        {
          "title": "Built different",
          "text": "By Howard, I already knew how to program. I was used to advanced classes and genuinely believed I was built different. When engineering students moved into business programs, I privately called it \"decaffeinated computer science.\" Young me was smart. He could also be insufferable."
        },
        {
          "title": "Real life was waiting",
          "text": "The core classes did not interest me, and college increasingly felt like a delay before real life could begin. I heard \"it's not what you know, it's who you know\" and took it seriously. I knew what I could do. The world did not know yet. I left to prove it."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "index": 2,
      "id": "era-2",
      "label": "Proving Ground",
      "entries": [
        {
          "title": "Back to the library",
          "text": "Leaving college turned confidence into a practical problem: I needed a job. I went to the library for books on networking, resumes, and job hunting, including What Color Is Your Parachute? and Who Moved My Cheese?, then hit the pavement."
        },
        {
          "title": "Someone gave me a chance",
          "text": "At a job fair, the executive director of a nonprofit saw potential in me and gave me my first tech-adjacent foothold. She also introduced me to technical certifications."
        },
        {
          "title": "Credibility",
          "text": "I studied independently for the A+ exam, passed it, and paired the credential with real experience. That combination helped me land a contract installing network printers at Bank of America—the highest-paying job I had ever had."
        },
        {
          "title": "The side door into programming",
          "text": "I took a tech support job at an internet startup, picked up a book on Windows Script Host, automated part of my work, and caught the attention of the CTO. I had not been hired as a programmer, but I found a way to show that I could be one."
        },
        {
          "title": "ColdFusion",
          "text": "That opening led to my first programming job. I learned ColdFusion from a book and became a web developer the same way I had learned so many things before: read until I understood enough to build."
        },
        {
          "title": "Silicon Valley",
          "text": "Leaving for Silicon Valley wasn't so different from leaving Howard — the same belief that I could make it before anyone else had agreed to it. NCSSM's motto was accept the greater challenge, and that instinct never left me: I wasn't chasing a place, I was chasing the biggest test I could find."
        },
        {
          "title": "Learning on demand",
          "text": "The pattern followed me, including a San Francisco job that wasn't even my first one out there but did require learning XSLT on the spot. It proved something the earlier jobs hadn't: that I could learn under real pressure, not just on my own time."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "index": 3,
      "id": "era-3",
      "label": "The Wanderer",
      "entries": [
        {
          "title": "Someone else in the equation",
          "text": "My daughter was born while I was living in California. I was married then, and decisions about where to live were no longer mine alone.",
          "photo": "/images/twins.jpg"
        },
        {
          "title": "Chicago",
          "text": "We moved to Chicago to be closer to my wife's family in Milwaukee—close enough to have support, but not so close that we were living on top of each other. Chicago had a startup culture, neighborhoods I loved, and plenty of interesting work.",
          "photo": "/images/chicago-street-with-daughter.jpg"
        },
        {
          "title": "Nine weeks",
          "text": "Around thirty, I started Couch to 5K on a cold January day. My lungs felt like they were burning, but I had a plan. Nine weeks later, I ran my first 5K."
        },
        {
          "title": "The bicycle stayed",
          "text": "After that first race, I trained for a triathlon, bought a bicycle, and took swimming lessons. I never raised enough money to enter the triathlon, but the bicycle stayed. I became a year-round bike commuter and discovered that being mostly car-free felt like a cheat code.",
          "photo": "/images/chicago-bike-race-with-daughter.jpg"
        },
        {
          "title": "Conquering winter",
          "text": "For a while, I treated Chicago winter like another challenge to beat. I biked through it, ran through it, and a couple of years later there was even a snowy 5K where I ran shirtless. I conquered winter. I just eventually decided I did not want to keep doing it every year."
        },
        {
          "title": "Los Angeles",
          "text": "When my job disappeared and my daughter's mother was planning to move to Los Angeles, I figured the whole family should go. LA became another restart."
        },
        {
          "title": "Coming home",
          "text": "Eventually I returned to the Charlotte area, my hometown. This time it was just my daughter and me, with family nearby to help us restart."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "index": 4,
      "id": "era-4",
      "label": "Becoming Myself",
      "entries": [
        {
          "title": "Home, differently",
          "text": "Returning to Charlotte was not a return to the person who had left. I was an experienced engineer, a father, and increasingly comfortable with the idea that I did not need to live or look quite like everyone else.",
          "photo": "/images/charlotte-with-daughter.jpg"
        },
        {
          "title": "The bow tie",
          "text": "I learned to tie a bow tie soon after coming home. I figured I might have to wear a tie, but I did not want to be normal about it.",
          "photo": "/images/bow-tie-office.jpg"
        },
        {
          "title": "Work, but on my terms",
          "text": "I worked at Bank of America three different times, along with Microsoft and several other companies. Between contracts, I even drove a pedicab instead of sitting home collecting unemployment. I was outside, exercising, meeting people, and having fun. I think the passengers could tell.",
          "photo": "/images/bow-tie-networking-event.jpg"
        },
        {
          "title": "Finding my people",
          "text": "I discovered CreativeMornings in Charlotte and found a community built around curiosity, creativity, and people being unapologetically themselves. I also kept choosing challenges outside work, from Spartan races to turning my home into another system to tinker with.",
          "photo": "/images/spartan-race-fire-jump.jpg"
        },
        {
          "title": "Building a new family",
          "text": "I came back to Charlotte with my daughter, but the family I built here was something new. I remarried and built a new household around the life we were creating together."
        },
        {
          "title": "The stable life",
          "text": "At iSolved, I thought I had finally found stability: an established career, remote work, a house, and a home office. After years of moving between cities and companies, I thought I had arrived."
        },
        {
          "title": "Until it wasn't",
          "text": "Then I lost the job I thought was stable. I had been unemployed before, but this time the market felt different. One of the assumptions underneath the life I had built was gone."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "index": 5,
      "id": "era-5",
      "label": "The Reinvention",
      "entries": [
        {
          "title": "Proving it",
          "text": "I'd been through plenty of job searches before, but this one was different — harder, harsher. I reached out to every resource I could: job coaches, even trying my hand as a LinkedIn creator. That's what pushed me to finally finish my degree, after getting employed, and to do it in a single term. I needed to prove I was who I'd always thought I was."
        },
        {
          "title": "A job, not the destination",
          "text": "I eventually went back to work, but the new role was a step backward in title, pay, flexibility, and stability. It gave me income, and it also made it impossible to pretend I was where I wanted to stay. So I kept moving on every front — working, studying, and still taking interviews from parking lots and meeting rooms in between."
        },
        {
          "title": "What actually changed",
          "text": "I graduated. I did not feel like a college graduate — I felt like the same dropout who'd spent twenty years proving he could do the work without the paper. I'd always respected learning; I never believed the credential was where it lived. Finishing it didn't tear anything down. It just got me into the rooms that still require it. If I ever get to make hiring decisions, I want that line gone entirely — not softened to \"degree or equivalent experience,\" just gone. Qualified is qualified."
        },
        {
          "title": "Building and serving",
          "text": "I kept building outside my day job through MyCREBuddy, helping turn someone else's idea into a working product. I also began volunteering on Sunday afternoons at the York County jail, leading an interactive life-skills class about goals and reminding the men that even while their movement is restricted, their minds are still free."
        },
        {
          "title": "Back to remote",
          "text": "Eventually I found my way back to remote work and to a role closer to the level of responsibility I wanted. Earlier in my career, I repeatedly moved toward opportunity. Now I can stay near Charlotte while the network brings the work to me."
        },
        {
          "title": "Still curious",
          "text": "The tools have changed, the profession is changing, and I no longer assume that stability is permanent. But the instinct underneath all of it is familiar: read, learn, ask for help when it makes sense, build something, and keep moving."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}