[9erdelta]

I did mechanical engineering undergrad, then started and almost finished mechanical engineering grad school but dropped out and got a job. Then I started studying programming at night, then co-founded a startup with some friends, and quit my mech eng job. After the startup flamed out, I went to another startup. Throughout the whole time of startups, I continued studying programming and especially started dialing in on computer graphics. Now I'm a graphics dev at Unity. This whole switch from mech eng to graphics was all in my 30s, and has taken about 9 years, I'll turn 40 in 2024. It's not easy, and there are a lot of challenges. For example I'm basically a junior graphics programmer as I enter my 40s--which sucks. But when I think about it, there's basically nothing else I'd rather be doing, so that's cool.

The general thing I've learned is: there are no short paths, only long paths. Figure out what you want and start the long path to get there, because there aren't short cuts. How to figure out what you want? Well that's a long path too.