An Excel spreadsheet

Some time ago, during one of agile rituals at work we were asked by our new scrum master to introduce ourselves and share some details about us, as well as our most life-changing moment. My catalog of life-changing experiences is fairly limited (or my memory is slowly failing), but I didn’t want to mention the same mundane things as the rest of my team. Instead, I opted for something enigmatic: I wrote ‘Excel spreadsheet’ with a smiley face.

As I write this, given that the meeting was too short for everyone to speak, I still haven’t had my turn to explain. And I’m non-ironically worried I’ll forget what I had in mind. But hey, isn’t that what blogs are for?

Before that though, let’s talk about things I didn’t pick.

My first computer

Yeah, I could say that counts as some sort of a life-changer. There must have been some computer at home at some point of my early life or this blog wouldn’t even exist today.

But I don’t think anyone in my nearest bubble DOESN’T have this kind of experience in their bio these days. Smartphones are computers too. The only difference is that you could tell how old I am based on what computer I mention. Or that, of all things, I’m specifically mentioning “computer” instead of iPad or something.

Anyway: Atari 65 XE, two joysticks, tape drive, plenty of game compilations on cassettes and a book explaining how to program in ATARI BASIC. My Dad bought it for me early in my childhood, but long after the heyday of 8-bit computers.

Loading games from cassettes was annoying. One cough, one sneeze, one table shake, one word too much - boom, tape loading error, 10 minutes of life wasted. So I started reading that BASIC book. I started typing sample programs, line by line. I would modify them and see what would happen. Over time I learnt input and output operations, loops, conditional expressions, some shenanigans with sound and graphics, and a cursed GOTO command.

Some time later, on my first PC, I found a C++ compilator and started learning it. With my BASIC background I could speed through easy parts and try to understand weird serious programming things like preprocessing, pointers, advanced data types and more.

It’s a fun story. It’s aging like fine wine given that most kids these days get a tablet as their first computing device. It typically heralds long chain of successful life events, from master’s degree in IT through a successful career in a well-paid industry.

But that’s not the case for me. If you scroll to the very bottom of my LinkedIn profile, you’ll find a little plot twist. Even though I never stopped enjoying computers, for a brief moment of my life things were looking grim.

Plan B

After finishing high school, my unsurprisingly obvious main plan was to get into IT studies in one of popular universities nearby. Unfortunately, it didn’t pan out. Having got a disappointing grade for my final math exam (not that surprising given that I wasn’t really great at it), I had few options left. So I went for English studies at a local teacher training college.

Fun and weird times. It took me some effort to earn my diploma, but it was worth it.

Fast forward three years and I pretty much immediately found a job as an English teacher. I was also able to find smaller gigs at private English schools. I can say a lot about this profession but job market for English teachers was really, really gracious. After all, sooner or later people of all ages would need at least a little English as their survival skill.

For two years I worked in two public schools, teaching children between 5 and 12 years old. Even though I preferred working with younger children and I enjoyed comfortable scheduling that would leave me enough room to drive between both schools, it was still a rough, mentally taxing, thankless, poorly paid job nobody around me seemed to be happy to do.

As a young teaching padawan I struggled big time and I hated getting up in the mornings and working in the evenings. YouTube or support groups on Facebook were yet to proliferate, so I felt like an impostor, with nobody to talk about my struggles and ask for advice.

Two years later, due to, let’s say, circumstances, I was let go from both schools. For a brief period of time I was still working part-time at local private schools, but those required a lot of commuting and that wasn’t viable long-term.

So… Here comes it.

That one little Excel spreadsheet

Once I got hooked to computers, I never got unhooked.

In 2000s I experienced the internet for the first time and taught myself how to build websites. I was slowly moving from Microsoft FrontPage and primitive JavaScript scripting towards PHP, early blogging engines, and finally WordPress. Once I bought my first domain name in 2007, I learnt basics of DNS management. I had a lot of very non-obvious tech stuff figured out very early. I was lacking commercial experience but I had passion and strong intrinsic motivation to keep going.

I also knew that all those big and serious websites I visited daily were built and maintained by someone, somewhere. And smaller companies that wanted to have their own website would need to hire someone to build it for them.

And Google was a thing. Still not as broken as today.

One evening, everything fell into place.

I opened Google, opened a new Excel spreadsheet and compiled a list of interactive agencies in my region. I found about 10, maybe 15.

I patched some sort of resume with links to whatever I had online at that time (a blog and some blogging templates?) and a nice motivational letter. I sent that set to all those companies from my Excel spreadsheet.

90% of them never replied.

A few responded with something along the lines of ‘thanks for reaching out, but we don’t need extra hands for now’.

One company asked if I’m up for a small task, a HTML website template to slice based on provided Photoshop file. I accepted, submitted it back promptly, they paid me. It didn’t yield anything substantial beyond that, but I got my first money.

Another company invited me for an interview. I jumped in. The adventure began.

Meanwhile, with tremendous support of my parents, I once again signed up for IT studies, this time at a private university.

A year later, when I found a new company and it became obvious I’m moving 200 kilometres away from my family home to Warsaw, combining work and studies started to be really troublesome. Therefore, to this day I don’t have a degree in IT.

The adventure is still going on.

It’s been a wild ride

I have had ups and downs. I succeeded at some things and fucked up others. I was climbing on the backs of giants but I’m also ashamed to have hurt numerous people on the way.

There are times when I’m deeply frustrated with petty things. And times when I’m childishly excited about favorable outcomes.

None of the above changes the indisputable fact I’m incredibly privileged to be in the place the teenage me could only dream of, doing things I deeply love.

Shit, I could have ended up doing so many other things in life. Maybe a thin red line separated me from dozens of more precarious timelines. I could as well have been chewed up and spat out by each and every black swan happening within my lifetime.

Dozens, hundreds, thousands of people worked hard, trusted me, supported me, gave me a chance at critical moments, shared something with me, taught me something. I’m a sum of other people’s selfless efforts and a debtor of other people’s grace.

However, whenever I’m asked about my life-changing moment, I subvert expectations. It was an Excel spreadsheet.