Hello there, everyone! It’s me, that guy you’ve never met! Hi!

On the internet, I go by blue_awning

You can call me Blue if you’d like, or we can do that thing some of us do when we’re terrible at remembering names: Avoid using a name altogether and stick with “dude”, “yo”, or point wildly in their direction while snapping so they can remind you. Incredibly awkward, but then we can pretend we had a sudden lapse of memory and not that our brains refuse to participate in basic social cognitive recall. 😅

Well then who are you, Blue?

I’m a guy from the States who lives outside of Philadelphia that recently turned 40 and is spiraling headfirst into a wonderful midlife crisis. After two decades working in all aspects of IT, I’m taking a step back from development and technical support to make a move into the physical #maker space. Another “software engineer turned goose farmer” as it were, but my geese are printed out of polyethylene terephthalate.

I spent the first decade of my career in very analytical roles. Whether it was troubleshooting PCs in the Windows XP era, building and maintaining servers, or configuring small business LANs, I was always the technical expert for folks that were not technically inclined. I didn’t notice the burnout at first, but gradually life started to get greyer and lose its vibrance. I was waking up, working, going to sleep, and repeating.

My wife started to get concerned well before I noticed it in myself. She encouraged me to find new hobbies and I catapulted myself through about a dozen of them. I found that I really enjoy writing, even if no one is going to read it. I tend to be a little too verbose sometimes, though, and get caught in an editing cycle that I can’t break from. Even things like this stream-of-consciousness post will be ruminated over before I can bring myself to hitting the “submit” button. A maddening symptom of my ADHD (along with gratuitous parentheses and having trouble sticking with a single hobby).

Along with writing, Reddit helped me discover a love for Photoshop. A tool I had played with as a teenager while building simple HTML websites was being used to create Comedy Gold in /r/photoshopbattles. I jumped into the community when it was thriving and made some incredible art that will surely stand the test of time.

It was during a quarterlife crisis that I realized I hated these analytical roles. I finally had a taste of the creative world and I couldn’t look back. I enrolled in Art School through the Tuition Reimbursement Program of my employer and threw all of their money at a for-profit art education. (I learned nothing!!)

While I was contemplating throwing away my entire career to become a starving artist, my wife and I got the incredible news that we were going to become parents! So instead of starting from scratch, I decided to pivot my career into a hybrid tech-and-creative role as a frontend web developer. Best of both worlds, right? RIGHT?!

I quickly rose through the ranks at the marketing agency I was working for. They called me a “unicorn” because I could code the backend of the site and its framework, but also create designs in Photoshop, make assets in Illustrator, code everything to be responsive, and optimize the SEO of the tags.

I was being celebrated. I was quickly promoted to lead developer and Director of Technology. I was working 60-80 hours each week because I was the one wearing ALL OF THE HATS.

I was being exploited. I had integrity. I was a perfectionist. My employers loved that. I didn’t let subpar work go out the door if my name was going to be attached to it. I made millions for my boss. Millions.

I was working so much I was barely able to see my family, despite me working from home and being “just a hallway away”. I was never able to take a vacation, either, because when I did the work would pile up in my inbox waiting for me to return. When my second child was born, I had to log in from the hospital to help launch multiple websites.

It was when my wife got sick and needed another surgery in 2022 that I quit the rat race for good. I told my boss that I needed to go on medical leave for 3 months to care for my wife and kids while she was recovering. We don’t have ‘a village’ to help, so the majority of the caregiving was going to fall on me. After a lot of back-and-forth, my boss reluctantly agreed. I made it clear that the work needed to continue while I was away and I would NOT be available to help. He understood.

Want to guess who returned to find a 3-month backlog of requests and projects? If you guessed “You, Blue! The guy telling the story!” then you’d be correct! I put in my two-month notice (yeah, months) to help hire someone and get them trained. I took my savings and walked away.

Dang, dude. That’s rough. What happened next?

My wife, who had recovered from her surgery and was thriving at work, agreed to be the breadwinner while I stayed at home with the kids. A huge role-reversal that we were both thrilled about, despite the woes from my aging parents who wished that I could remain as the traditional burnt-out breadwinner. I spent the following year learning to cook, exercise, and play with the kids literally every day. It was probably one of the greatest years of my life. I lost 50lbs and removed all my stress!

I wish I could responsibly recommend quitting the rat race for all overworked, stressed-out, burnt Americans, but unfortunately it just isn’t an option for most. It was only available to me because of the two decades I spent grinding and saving. And those savings lasted us three whole years in a high-cost-of-living region!

But, naturally, all good things must come to an end. Inflation is wild, the country is in shambles, and AI took most of the “fallback opportunities” I had lined up for myself when leaving my web role. So where does someone go when they’re done with the rat race but still needs to earn a living?

Entrepreneurship!

I’m taking my creativity and love for art along with my background in tech and engineering to build a brand new business in the physical maker space!

Okay, but why are you here?

Well, as you can probably tell, I still like to write. I stumbled upon a PhotographyLovers Ecency blog via a Reddit post about Urban Exploration and fell into the rabbit hole of Hive.Blog and the Hive blockchain. After deep diving over the weekend I thought this would make a fantastic place to find new friends, build community, and DOCUMENT ALL THE THINGS when it comes to building this new business. I plan to share insights, projects, life lessons, and so much more.

I promise I'm not here just to promote myself or any theoretical goods. I'm only looking for little slice of the internet to call home and share my exploits.

With a tinge of self-deprecation and a spoonful of (subjectively) bad comedy, I hope I can provide some entertainment while “starting over” for the Nth time in my career. Enjoy the schadenfreude of my journey and maybe we can all learn something together.

That being said, new Hive friends, where would be the best category to share these entrepreneurial startup stories? Ideally I’ll be building a design firm manufacturing custom products in a 3D-printed medium. I’ll be detailing tutorials on CAD, printing, post-processing, and much more in addition to the topics surrounding launching a startup business.

I’m excited to start sharing with you all and I’m eager to jump into some relevant communities! I’m not typically a big fan of most social media, but this platform seems VERY cozy and welcoming enough to give it a try. 😄

HUGE shoutout to the Discord community, too, for helping me get started with my first post and showing me the ropes.

See you around the Hive, all!

#intro #introduceyourself #3dprint #3dprinting #millennial #entrepreneur #newbie