My Life circa 1985 - 1995

So I've been running into so many people on Facebook that I figured I would post a little history just to save myself from having to cut and paste the same story into a slew of emails. This will be in two parts as some folks haven't been around me for 20 years, others for 10.

So, I graduated ETHS in 1985 and went out to California to attend Occidental College in Los Angeles. Why Occidental? Well, it was the closest decent college I could find to whatever school Jeff Favre had decided to go to. Yup, I chose it based on a crush! That and the amount of financial aid they gave me. And the fact that it was far away from Chicago and I wanted to try a new city.

Jeff dropped out of his college after the first semester, and I remained at Oxy for two years. I hated it. I didn't fit in. I tried to do the theatre thing there, but it was no match for Croo. The best part was that I took a photography class at the near-by Art Center College of Design, and had my very own darkroom on Oxy's campus. And I took a piano class, which I enjoyed but never practiced for.

After two years, I decided to transfer. Mimi Purviance was attending the U of C at Berkeley, so I made my way up there. I lived in a co-op and met some great folks there, but only lasted at the school for one semester. I realized that I had no idea what I was doing in college, aside from wasting my money, my parents' money, and my time. So I dropped out and got a job in a cafe called The Edible Complex. I met and dated a great guy named Gary Escobedo. But two years in Berkeley and I was ready to move on again.

So I ended up back in Chicago, living with Chris Blasingame, first in Rogers Park, then in Evanston, right next to the main post office. Chris' dad hired me to work at his print shop, so I learned how to run an offset lithography press.

Yet another two years and I was ready to go back to college. This time I wanted to study photography. It was 1991. I applied to, and got into, four different art colleges. RISD was one of those schools and I was so excited to attend! Alas, they had no financial aid for me and I couldn't afford the $9000/semester fees on my own. So, second choice Atlanta College of Art became my first choice. (They have since been swallowed up by SCAD.)

I drove from Chicago to Atlanta with my mom, who had flown into Chicago for the trip from her home at the time in Raleigh, NC. It was raining when we arrived. I remember thinking within the first hour of being there that I hated it. Not good. I had a long three years ahead of me before I got my degree. I'd better start liking something about the town, and quick.

I eventually found a house to rent, and met some great people there. School was cool. Although I was generally older than most of the students, I found people to relate to. I dated Mike Skutchan (now Eaden) for three years. Although that relationship went down in flames, we have now come to some level of friendship via Facebook, which is nice.

After I got my BFA in Photography (1994 - nine years after graduating from ETHS), I did what all good art students do - I got a job at a coffee house. The owner was a people-user, but it kept me afloat financially for the most part. It helped that we served food which wasn't tracked. I got really tired of the menu there. Eventually the free food wasn't cutting it, so I quit.

I met another boy, and developed a crush on him. He was working at a small ISP called MindSpring and they needed someone to answer phones while their usual guy was on vacation. It was a two week gig, but it would pay me better than the cafe. And I'd get to work with Kevin. So I took it. I had also applied at another tech company as an HTML coder. But their environment seemed toxic to me. MindSpring, on the other hand, was heaven. I had to convince them to hire me (I had no previous tech experience), and somehow I landed a job with them after those first two weeks.

I was hired into Tech Support and had a perfectly vertical learning "curve" to deal with. Thank god for people like Norbert, Galen, Tripp, Sudish, and John Nixon. I never would have gotten as far as I did at MindSpring without their help.

So that ends the first 10 years out of high school for me.