a week or so ago, i had an somewhat of an epiphany - i don't think i want to work in tech anymore.
i've been very lucky in my career (well, and in life in general, to be honest) - i always sort of assumed that after i graduated college, i'd get a job in a cafe and try to make ends meet while tinkering with Ableton Live. instead, i was offered my first software engineering job before i even graduated, and things sort of progressed from there.
i've been programming and tinkering with computers since i was about 7 years old, when my dad brought a busted old windows pc home from work and helped me fix it up and make it work. i never really thought i could get a job doing programming - i had very little formal education in it, i didn't think i was really that good at it, and it just seemed, i dunno, worlds away from what was possible for me.
as it turned out, i'm actually pretty damn good at programming, and ultimately, it wasn't really very hard to get any of the jobs i've had in my career so far. this isn't meant to be boastful - like i said, i've been quite lucky - just a reflection.
around the same time that i built that first computer, i also started taking guitar lessons. along with messing with computers, music has been the other constant in my life for the past two and a half decades. i wrote my own songs on guitar, played in a low-skill high-energy punk band, interned at a recording studio in high school, and started learning music production from a friend of a friend in college.
i've learned that i really enjoy the engineering part of music. when i did that internship in high school, i learned for the first time about the most basic production techniques - how to use eq, compression, reverb, etc - and immediately started applying them to my bedroom recordings. it was (and still is) so much fun (and frustrating) to take a raw recording and carefully tweak and sculpt it into what i hear in my head. and as i was walking the dog the other day, realizing that i might not want to continue my tech career, i also realized that "audio engineer" is a job, and that i could do that job.
i've never really thought i could make a living off music - i have almost no formal education in it, i don't really think i'm that good at it, and it really does seem worlds away from what's possible for me. but all of that feels eerily familiar...
at the moment, i don't have a concrete plan or a even much of an idea what this will look like. i imagine i'll be at my current job for at least a couple more years (although, who knows). i worry about money when i don't have a moderately cushy tech salary anymore. i wonder if i'll enjoy working in the field, or if making it a career will ruin it for me. but mostly, i'm excited, and surprisingly (for me) confident that it will work out somehow...