Lesson 1: So I begin…

I can’t say I remember much of my childhood. It all seems like a blur as time flies by. So I’ll try to wrap up the adolescent years of my life in a few paragraphs.

You know how it is, you come into a world that is so massive, yet you are so small. You never know what role you play on this beautiful earth, all you know is that Antarctica is going away because Al Gore said so (whether you believe that or not). Yet, I believe that I am a child of God. He has placed me on this earth to fulfill a specific purpose – A purpose that may take decades to unravel, or hit me in a moment of clarity.

Now, most people usually don’t start entrepreneuring at the tender age of two to three, but according to my parents, I worked 40 hours a week including overtime at my job in the cradle, which happened to be crying. Not satisfied with my job, I worked harder till I finally got promoted to diaper destroyer. See? I honestly don’t remember too much of those days, other than I had loving parents who took good care of me through the calm and the storm.

Goals at the time: Finding the perfect escape route out of the cradle.

During the elementary school years, it was Pokémon and Pokémon cards. That’s all I remember. Well, aside from playing Solitaire and Math Blaster Episode I: In Search of Spot on Windows 3.1. River Oaks Elementary also had a cool “Nature Garden” that I helped develop. Did you know that Amazon.com CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, is ROE alumni? How awesome is that?

Goals at the time: Catching all 150 Pokémon.

Middle school was a bit different, since games became more advanced with the advent of Windows 95/98/2000. Starcraft, Rollercoaster Tycoon, and Counter-Strike all took center stage. I actually built my first computer in the 8^th grade. A classmate of mine said it couldn’t be done. You should see the look on his face when I pulled out the receipts and started preaching in pure technobabble. For those fellow nerds out there who want to know the specs:

• AMD 1.4Ghz Thunderbird 266Mhz FSB
• Generic 512Mb of pc133 SDR RAM
• ECS K7S5A Motherboard (had to go through 4 revisions to get a stable board!)
• VisionTek Xtasy nVidia Geforce 3 Ti 200

Goals at the time: Get the highest 3Dmark01 score.

During my middle school years, I also came to painful realization that there are girls on this planet as well. If I had to make a chronological list of my encounters with girls, it would look like this:

1. Dan goes after girl 1.
2. Girl 2 goes after Dan.
3. Dan gets girl 1.
4. Dan loses girl 1 next day.
5. Dan is immature and loses both girls.

I just realized that my laundry still needs to be folded, so I need to get right on that. But the lesson here is simple. During your adolescent years, you just take it easy, and find what you love to do. That love will soon manifest itself, and begin to shape you into the person you were destined to be. For me it was my addiction to computers, how about you?

Also guys… don’t start thinking that you need women in your lives, your bank account will appreciate it. Plus, there’s always plenty of fish. I leave it to the man upstairs to be my “net.”

The next several lessons will be slower paced as I am heading into high school, where I learned a lot of lessons.

Tags: Lessons //