It’s 3 AM and I just lost money I shouldn’t have been playing with.
The crypto chart on my screen looks like a cliff. My stomach feels like it went over the edge. I should close the laptop. Go to sleep. Forget this ever happened.
But I don’t.
I open a new tab instead. Then another. I start reading about blockchain architecture. Smart contracts. Proof of work versus proof of stake. The money’s gone but I can’t stop thinking about how any of this actually works.
Right then, something shifts.
I stop caring about getting rich and start caring about understanding. I don’t know it yet, but that’s the moment everything changes.
Let me show you how I got there.
I’m sixteen, sitting on a bench, fidgeting with a pen, in my class during a high school recess. It was so loud in there.
The thought arrives quietly, like it’s been waiting to pounce on me: How am I going to support my mum & dad?
There’s no emergency. No one’s asking me to. But the weight settles on my chest anyway and it doesn’t leave.
I go online looking for answers. YouTube has a lot of them, apparently. Guys with perfect lighting and urgent thumbnails promising the ONE thing that will change everything. I watch them. I believe them because I need to.
First I try trading. I spend weeks learning candlestick patterns. I fill notebooks with strategies. I’m convinced I’ve figured something out. Then I learn you have to be eighteen to open a trading account.
That’s it. Dream’s over before it starts.
So I try dropshipping. Build stores on Shopify. Teach myself Wordpress at midnight because paying someone isn’t an option. I figure out DNS configurations by breaking things and Googling the error messages because AI wasn't there then. Nothing works. Everything costs more than I have.
P. S: Here’s what I don’t realize: I think I’m failing. But really, I’m learning how to learn.
COVID hits during my last year of school.
Everything stops. The world goes quiet. And in that quiet, I can finally hear myself think.
I need structure. Real structure, not another YouTube rabbit hole where everyone’s yelling about passive income.
I find a Digital Marketing course on LinkedIn Learning. I tell myself I’ll start after college admissions are done. I last maybe three days before I click the first video.
By October 2020, I’ve got the certification.
But the second I finish, I see the problem. Marketing without good copy is just noise. Marketing without design is invisible.
So I learn design. Figma becomes my evening routine. I pull apart templates pixel by pixel. Study color theory like I’m preparing for an exam. Every tutorial teaches me something I immediately want to use.
College starts and I find coding.
HTML, CSS, a little JavaScript through freeCodeCamp. It’s different from everything else I’ve tried. Code is honest. It either works or it breaks. There’s no in between, no gray area where you can pretend.
I like that.
Then 2021 happens. The crypto bull run that everyone’s talking about.
I buy in with money I’ve saved. Watch it grow. Feel smart for once. Then watch it drop. Feel stupid. Watch it drop more. Feel sick.
Most people I know quit right there. Delete the apps. Say they’ll never touch crypto again.
I just couldn't stop reading about it.
That night at 3 AM, staring at the red numbers, something breaks open in my head.
I don’t care about the money anymore. I care about how this works. How a distributed ledger functions. How cryptographic proof can replace trust. How you can build an entire financial system with no single point of failure.
I’m fascinated in a way I’ve never been fascinated before.
For the first time, I’m not learning something because I think it’ll pay off. I’m learning because I have to know. Because walking away feels impossible.
That’s the change. That’s the story.
My last two years of college turn into a workshop.
Class projects become real projects. Side experiments become portfolio pieces. All those scattered skills from the desperate YouTube days, the failed dropshipping stores, the midnight Wordpress battles, they start connecting. Web hosting knowledge helps me during my training. Design skills make my code projects look professional. Marketing thinking shapes how I present everything.
After graduation, I join ipsr solutions for Cloud and DevOps training. Then an internship in the same domain. I learn infrastructure, systems, scalability. Another layer added to everything else.
Here’s what I wish I could tell that sixteen year old on the bench:
There is no master plan. You won’t figure it all out ahead of time. You’ll try things that don’t work. You’ll lose money you can’t afford to lose. You’ll feel behind everyone else.
But none of it is wasted.
That trading account you can’t open teaches you patience. Those Shopify stores that fail teach you web infrastructure. That crypto loss teaches you what actually matters to you.
You think you’re looking for a shortcut. What you’re really looking for is the thing you’re too curious to quit.
I’m still that kid on the bench in some ways. Still wondering how things work. Still learning obsessively. Still building.
But I’m different too.
I know now that the question isn’t “How do I make this pay off?” The question is “What can’t I stop thinking about?”
Answer that and you’ve found your path. Even if it doesn’t look like anyone else’s. Even if it takes you places you never planned to go.
Especially then.
Thanks for reading this. I’m just getting started.