As a musician in my younger years, I found my way into the restaurant industry because the flexibility was an incredible benefit. It allowed me to tour both coasts when I was playing with The Vestals in Minneapolis as well as perform numerous short tours of the Midwest.

This industry also made it relatively easy to relocate to Brooklyn and later to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, I was given the opportunity to try my hand at management. I enjoyed all of the challenges that the position offered but after working 60+ hour weeks for 2 1/2 years I decided it was time for a change.

While in my management position, I took on the responsibility of maintaing the restaurant's website and gained my first hands-on experience with HTML and CSS. I also took on a pet project of customizing and installing an open-source reservation software on the restaurant's webserver. It was challenging since I had never heard of PHP before this but I pushed through and finished the project. My eyes had been opened and I realized that I could work towards a career change as a developer.

Finally, I decided to to a Nanodegree at Udacity.com to help me gain the confidence to start pursuing this career change. I learned a ton while completing the program and enjoyed most of the time (of course, there were moments of frustration, I'm looking at you Knockout.js, but I always persevered). Now I am ready to make the jump and would love to hear from you if you are looking for a Front-End Developer.