I took welding classes in high school. While doing so, I was also an apprentice as a Tool and Die maker. This taught me tooling, fixtures, squareness, and setup. I never fully committed to these trades because I'm a musician that was an obsession that was hard to kick. I would have a good job, then walk away from it because music and writing were more important to me. By chance, I met a businessman from Chicago who took me under his wing. He owned a company that installed satellite dishes. Within six months I had mastered every aspect of the job. By month nine, he contracted a third of the company to me. I had about 15 employees. A year in, here I was with no formal education but absolutely killing it financially. Then 2008 happened. I went from $400k a year to nothing. Luckily, I had saved money and coasted for about two years. By 2010 I needed to reinvent myself. I didn't want to work in a factory, but I decided to do it anyway. Within a year I learned how to set up CNCs and program robotic gantry systems. I moved on to run a mill department, then Swiss departments with programming. Eventually I learned how to program from a seat instead of doing it by hand at the machine. That opened the door to machine building and the electrical side. That knowledge gained me entry into CNC distribution. I started as a tech, made engineer after three years, then moved into math, machine learning, and customer service. Everything I've learned has been through hands-on experience. I've been sent to many engineering classes, but honestly, all I'm thinking about is lunch. I would never advise anyone to take the route I have but it has made me fearless of failure, with an obsession to learn that sometimes costs me weight, sleep, and friendships. That's a gift and a curse, but I might as well use it to see how far my knowledge and drive can take me.

Im getting there. The amount of lying that I had to do to clear Fanuc alarms