The Chute Will Open

I’ve had a job since I was 13 years old and have a paycheck since then, well up until now…

My wife and I started a family at young ages. I was 20 and she was just 19, but only because our daughter arrived 6 weeks early, so I always joke that she was the original teen mom and I want my MTV money!

Fast forward to this year, I’m now 47 and I’ve held the following job titles in my life so far…

Dishwasher, Car Detailer, Painter, Welder, “Tape Ape”, Developer, Lead Developer, Team Leader, VP of Applications Development, UX Leader, Mobile Practice Leader, Janitor (for the tanning salon my wife owned at the same time as these other roles), App Dev Delivery Leader, and most recently, Chief Innovation Officer.

Never heard of a “Tape Ape”? It’s running around the entire basement of a building loading old IBM reel to reel backup machines in the early 90’s, typically on a skateboard or while wearing roller skates.

On January 20th of this year, following a given notice, I resigned from my position to spend this year chasing some personal interests, growing myself, and merging my passions in technology of both code and art. The emergence of VR/AR capabilities offer a unique opportunity to combine 3D and business problems in ways that go far beyond gaming that I plan to immerse myself in going forward.

I was thrilled to get a seat in a special program between EON Reality and UNMC here in Omaha called the Virtual Reality Innovation Academy, one of twelve accepted in the program, and that’s not even the cool part…

Imagine approaching your wife and and floating the idea of walking away from an amazing job, with amazing people, that you helped recruit and build to keep chasing your passions, and “go to zero” as I call it (as there is no pay in this program) and she simply tells you to go for it, so we did. In fact, she has less fear than me and I hope everyone has someone that believes in them the way she does me.

Thank you wife. I love you.

One of my favorite bits of inspiration is this amazing message from Steve Harvey. Jump…

Along this new journey, I plan to write some articles on topics from my 25+ years in IT and leadership, finish a book I’ve started, publish a couple app ideas and complete this dive deep in this VRIA program and I have no idea where this goes just yet but I know I did in fact jump, so here it goes… please stay tuned if you’d like to follow my journey.

The chute will open.