I just won robots after I stopped renouncing my tech background.

Yup, pretty much the title. I missed out on a pretty big opportunity for many reasons at the end of last year. I recently found out that part of it was that I “didn’t have a strong tech background,” this was around a month ago and a part of me is still internally screaming. For a very long time, I worked in Information Technology (software, hardware, application, networking), Instructional Technology (the tech end of distance learning, back end of 2 Learning Management Systems), and Informatics. Some parts of that career were fantastic and I was good at it. Many parts of that career were traumatizing and toxic in the psychological sense. When I left that field, I was kinda broken. I vowed to stop keeping up with new technological advances etc., beyond what I wanted to use as an end user. Over time, I did get to the point where I was able to completely minimize and/or not mention it at all on resumes etc.  When I tried to score another opportunity through the same source, I sucked it up and played up my tech background. It didn’t work out.  Anyway, letting more tech into my life, and not hiding the tech of my past has led to some interesting things.

I’ve been thinking about the what ifs considering that I cannot manage to get a job in my current field. I’ll be more qualified soon so maybe that will help, but it looks bleak. This led to considering informational and assistive technology and how my grad school degree could be applied along with my tech background (it’s kind of going backwards but it’s a higher level and I wouldn’t have to be stuck in a hellscape job site forever like I was before). I started learning a basic scripting language because coding is something I oddly never really did. I’m no programmer.

At a Maker Fair I recently attended, I filled out some raffle things. I just one two simple robots. They use a scripting language to program them (maybe not the same one exactly). Cool, huh? The universe is shouting do this thing.

So, current plan, stay the course. Finish the degree and all the bs for the degree. If a job directly related cannot be procured within a couple of months of graduation, I jump ship. Also, while I job hunt and finish the degree, I will continue to learn and develop and relearn/update tech knowledge and skills. And even if the original plan does work out, the tech stuff could be really cool in that context or as a cool side gig.

I also had a really cool app idea. I have no idea how hard it would be to make. I’m not exactly going all in here. And it might already exist. If it does, it might be an assistive tech app that would meet some of my support needs. Things could be cool. Things could get a lot better for me.

I pick up my robots this evening.