Starting out

"What am I doing?"  Those 4 words I repeated to myself for some time leading up to actually putting in my 2 week notice.  For as many times as I spoke those words to another person, I internalized the question 50 times more.  I was willfully leaving a job I've had for over 12 years that provided a comfortable living wage with full healthcare, dental, and vision benefits.  It was in the middle of the "great recession".  I recently got married.  I had a mortgage on a house plus many other debts, just gotten married and had an expensive honeymoon in New Zealand and Fiji.  The housing market was at a 20 year low.  We also wanted to start a family.  I had very little liquid assets.  Perfect timing!  (Myself from a few years ago would have sucker punched my face and gracefully offered the advice:  "Idiot!  Don't be stupid.").

It was on April Fool's Day, 2010 that I submitted my notice.  Surely it was a strange coincidence, but I informed a skeptical boss that I was indeed serious.  The time had come.  Why did I do it?  Money couldn't be the only reason, could it?  It certainly was/is a driving force to have financial freedom, and an extremely powerful one.  I started off working at my last employer as a "Software Engineer" with only a couple of years experience out of college and a large debt load.  I knew nothing of the industry I was involved with.  During those twelve years I vastly improved my engineering knowledge, but more importantly actually learned the industry I was writing software for!  I steadily morphed from being known as a pure utility engineer/developer to more of a focused product role, eventually becoming a spokesman at trade shows around the world.  I wasn't at trade shows arguing about garbage collection routines, object oriented designs, or CISC vs. RISC architecture.  It was my knowledge of business level problems and solutions where I found my path.

So, why start a blog about this, and why now?  I always had the thought to share some of the experiences, joys, and frustrations of starting a software business.  It's been about 15 months since that April Fools day, and surely a lot has happened.  It was a bit too chaotic to write/blog when I first went solo.  A little perspective since then has put things together in my brain.

I hope to share the challenges, joys, and disappointments with anyone who might be going through this or is thinking of trying it for themselves.  No experience will be the same, but there are a lot of shared hurdles.  As the title of this blog hints, I'm on the East coast!  I'm not in social media!!  The software I produce is of little interest to your Aunt or your 15 year old son.  I have no doubt Justin Timerberlake will not star in a movie adaption of this story.