By the time Rebecca and I had settled into our own place, I felt like I had finally stopped falling.
The move to Texas had been difficult. There had been the garage room, temporary jobs, uncertainty, and the constant feeling that everything depended on whatever happened next.
Now, for the first time, I could breathe.
Not because we were successful.
We weren't.
But we were surviving on our own.
That mattered.
The first few years in Texas were a patchwork of temporary jobs.
One position had me scanning medical records into a computer system. It was simple work, but I attacked it the way I usually attacked everything.
I worked quickly.
I worked efficiently.
Before long I had helped eliminate the backlog they had hired me to process.
The people there liked me.
They talked about keeping me.
Unfortunately, by doing the job well, I had also helped eliminate the need for the job.
In a strange way, I worked myself out of work.
Later, I found another company doing similar work.
Most people saw stacks of paper and a scanner.
I saw something different.
I saw the future.
Entire filing systems were being converted into digital records. Information that once required rooms full of filing cabinets could now be stored inside a computer.
Most people simply followed instructions.
I understood what we were really doing.
That fascinated me.
The company liked me and I liked the work.
The problem was the pay.
Rebecca and I were trying to build a life, and curiosity alone wasn't enough to pay the bills.
So I kept looking.
Eventually I found what I had been searching for.
Time Warner Cable.
Technical support.
Finally.
For the first time since arriving in Texas, I felt like I was moving back toward the world where I belonged.
Computers.
Technology.
Troubleshooting.
Problem solving.
I spent about a year in technical support before an opportunity appeared.
Time Warner Cable launched a new department called Business Services.
At the time there were only three technicians assigned to it.
I was one of them.
Looking back, I don't think I appreciated what that meant.
At the time it simply felt like another opportunity.
What I didn't realize was that I had finally found the type of work that fit the way my mind worked.
Traditional call center work is relentless.
One call ends.
Another begins.
Then another.
Then another.
The queue never stops.
Business Services was different.
We supported technicians instead of customers.
When everything was working, things were quiet.
When something broke, the real work began.
At first, that made me nervous.
Years of call center work had conditioned me to believe that being busy meant being productive.
I remember speaking to my supervisor about it.
I wasn't taking many calls and I thought I was doing something wrong.
He smiled.
"Relax," he said.
"It's okay."
Then he explained something that changed the way I viewed the job.
"This department isn't like that."
He was right.
Success wasn't measured by how many calls I answered.
Success was measured by whether I could solve problems.
I loved it.
The technicians I supported were out in the field doing real installations and solving real problems.
When they completed a job, many of them would stop by and tell me what they had encountered.
What worked.
What failed.
What they learned.
Those conversations became an education.
Every technician knew something I didn't.
Every problem taught me something new.
There were several field technicians I admired.
They knew things I didn't know.
When they talked, I listened.
The older I get, the more I realize most of my education came from people rather than classrooms.
A little knowledge from one person.
A little from another.
Over time those pieces added up.
Before long, people started bringing me their personal computers.
Not company equipment.
Their own machines from home.
If something wasn't working, they brought it to me.
It wasn't part of my job description.
People simply trusted me.
One day my supervisor approached me with a problem that had nothing to do with cable service.
His wife was a veterinarian and one of the computers at her office was in trouble.
The machine had become painfully slow and there was concern that important information might be lost.
He had remote access to the computer and handed me the credentials.
Then he told me to see what I could do.
I logged out of the phones and got to work.
While my coworkers continued taking calls, I spent the next several hours connected to a computer miles away.
Everything moved painfully slowly.
I would issue a command and wait.
Then wait some more.
At the time, I suspected the machine had been infected with some type of malware.
Whatever the cause, the computer barely responded.
The goal wasn't to save the computer.
The goal was to save the data.
Patiently, I worked through the system and eventually established a backup location on a NAS.
Little by little, the critical files made their way to safety.
The transfer took hours.
But in the end, the important information was preserved.
Later the machine was wiped and rebuilt from scratch.
The computer itself didn't matter.
The data did.
That experience taught me an important lesson.
Computers can be replaced.
Hard drives can be replaced.
Software can be reinstalled.
Data is different.
Once it's gone, it's often gone forever.
Looking back, that wasn't really a story about a broken computer.
It was a story about trust.
Someone believed I could solve a problem that mattered.
And I did.
Over the years I developed a saying:
"The more knowledge I gain, the more I realize how much I don't know."
The older I got, the more true it became.
Every answer uncovered another question.
Every lesson revealed another mystery.
Life would be incredibly boring if you knew everything.
Nothing would be new.
Nothing would surprise you.
Nothing would be left to discover.
I've always believed that every bit of knowledge is a present wrapped in mystery.
You don't know what's inside until you open it.
Maybe that's why I've always loved technology.
Maybe that's why I've always loved learning.
Maybe that's why I've rebuilt my life so many times.
Curiosity has always pulled me forward.
People say curiosity killed the cat.
Maybe.
But what a life that cat lived.
For the first time since moving to Texas, I felt like I had found my place.
Not because I knew everything.
But because I had discovered something worth spending the rest of my life learning.