Chris Carlin

Background

About Chris Carlin

I realized one day that we should not define ourselves based on title or position, but instead by who we want to be. Extrinsic motivation can only carry you so far in life, but without purpose it is easy to become hollow. This is a lesson that took me years of introspection to learn. Having spent a decade in retail management, years in school for computer science, and having spent time freelancing, I can honestly say that what makes me happy is learning. Learning business acumen was easy, but learning leadership skills was a real challenge. As an introvert, I had to push myself out of my comfort zone to hold store meetings and lead teams; but the dopaminergic response from challenging myself made it worthwhile. What I was lacking, on the other hand, was a sense of purpose. I prided myself on being the one that knew how to do anything or the one that was sent to fix broken areas, but was that who I wanted to be? After spending more time than I care to admit feeling empty and without purpose, I realized that my motivations were not truly who I was. That I hadn't been true to myself and had ignored what really made me happy. When I think back to what really made me happy in my internship with the county schools IT department, I remember the joy of talking with the director about old tape drives. How he would get excited talking about Megabyte hard disks and how I would get excited talking about networking. The joy of standing in the server room. The excitement when I learned about VMware ESXi being able to run virtual machines of servers. I've always known I had a love of tech, but the passion came from learning about new technologies. The happiness I get from watching videos about SR-IOV or overcoming a technical issue in code is unparalleled in my life. Even spending 6 hours banging my head against a wall trying to figure out why my code doesn't work is worth it when I figure it out. The reward of learning is being able to create. Being able to create means being able to express oneself. Being able to share with the world who we are and what makes us tick. For me that's technology and creation itself.