About me
I was born in southern Mississippi in June, but I have lived in many places and tried many different things. Out of the 7 states I've lived in, my most formative teen and young adult years were spent in Las Vegas, NV. I later moved to Tennessee to be closer to my nephews and that was where I met my lovely husband Bodhi.
In 2021, I was officially diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and this put a lot of my life experiences before and since into perspective. At the time I was working for Best Buy doing customer service over the phone, mainly in tech support and order management for home theater and appliances. I worked very hard to fit into the role I had, but learned over time that the way my brain is wired and the social expectations of front-line customer service did not gel together very well.
The other thing that job at Best Buy offered me, however, was a small taste of the tech world, which I decided to explore further. I started with a Google Coursera course in IT support fundamentals where I learned a lot that I didn't know before about basic computer science. Ultimately, I decided more general tech support wasn't going to be optimal for me, but I had always had a general curiosity towards coding. I downloaded a Python learning app called Mimo to play around with on my phone, and within a couple of weeks, started looking at bootcamps so I could learn more. I found, applied for, and was ultimately accepted to attend App Academy.
This really kickstarted my journey to becoming a software engineer. During my 24 weeks in the program, I built three full stack applications using a variety of tools including React, Redux, JavaScript, Python, Flask, Express, and more. Beyond that, I learned how to learn about tech, how to apply knowledge and skills I already had to new tools, how to read and understand documentation, and how to solve problems by breaking them down into more manageable pieces.
I'm currently living in southern IL and looking for a new position in software engineering to continue building this career. My favorite thing about coding is when I get absorbed in problem solving so deeply and everything else disappears. It's like solving puzzles or playing a game for me. Outside of coding I also love tattoos, all things Halloween or spooky, reading tarot, playing board/card/dice games, and D&D. I also spend time cuddling with my chihuahua/dachshund mixed dog, Daisy.
