First Steps

Hello World!!
My name is David, I’m 28, and not too long ago I woke up and realized I was going nowhere in life. I needed to do something—quick—before I got left behind.

In 2018, I moved out with my then-girlfriend when I was 22. I packed up my life and left everything—my job, my friends—to move almost three hours away to a city I’d never been to. We moved into a tiny 650 sq ft apartment, and I took the first job that would hire me: selling furniture, so I could support her through nursing school.

It didn’t take long—just a few months—for me to realize sales wasn’t for me. My boss sat me down to say I wasn’t meeting expectations. But, by pure luck, I had just heard in a meeting that someone on the delivery team had given their notice. That seemed more up my alley.

Two weeks later, I was working at a new store, with new faces, and doing back-breaking work. Try lifting your couch right now. Now carry it upstairs, then downstairs, through narrow doorways, and around all your little knick-knacks—15 times a day, 10 hours a day. Not so easy for only $13/hr.

It was a good way to stay in shape, but the second an inside warehouse position opened up, I jumped on it like a pig in mud. That’s where I really started gaining hands-on experience, which eventually landed me a spot in the service department.

For the past five years, I’ve been driving all over Ohio, repairing furniture in customers' homes. It’s not exciting. People are a lot dirtier than you might think. And while you're still holding that couch in the air—grab the damn vacuum.

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So that brings us to the present. You're all caught up on the brief history of me. I won’t overdo it with the boring details—just the parts that matter.

For the past 8–12 months, I’ve felt ready to make a change. I wasn’t sure what to do or how to do it. After falling down many YouTube rabbit holes and starting way too many 3-day hobbies, I stumbled onto freeCodeCamp.

I told myself, “I’m way too stupid to learn how to code. That’s for the kids who got straight A’s in high school or took comp-sci.” But since it was free—and I didn’t exactly have anything better to do—I gave it a shot.

To my surprise, I actually started to pick up HTML kind of alright. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it’d be. Then came CSS... and I remembered that I have zero imagination when it comes to visual design. I can follow prompts and write answers, sure. But make something look nice from scratch? Sorry, that’s not me. Still, I pushed through the course and gave the unguided projects my best shot.

(Don’t judge—I started this when it came out, so it was all fresh in my head.)

Around that same time, my company opened its first full-time IT position. We’d always used a third-party contractor who took forever to respond, so it made sense. The guy who usually helped with tech stuff at the store convinced the owners to bring him on full-time. We’re a small company—around 150 employees across six stores in two states.

Not long after he got the job, I talked to him about how overwhelmed he was, and decided to pause the coding path to focus on IT and cybersecurity. I even wrote a proposal to make the same kind of career pivot.

Long story short (didn’t realize this post would get so long): my proposal was denied. But I kept learning. I got a Google cert, took a few more courses, and landed an interview for an IT role elsewhere. My anxiety got the best of me, though, and I talked myself out of the opportunity. (Again—probably being too hard on myself. But hey, it’s tough out there. I was hoping someone would take a chance, or just be desperate enough to hire me.)

So, here I am—back to online coding classes. It’s the one thing that’s been gnawing at the back of my mind. I came back to it.

The video game? That’s just a side effect.

I’m currently taking Boot.dev’s backend development course to build foundational programming knowledge that I can use to either get a job—or make one. I’ve always had a book idea, but I think it would work even better as a video game, and it could reach a much wider audience.

So here I am. Bringing you my game (hopefully):

Destinus.

It’s a play on “destiny” and “Atlantis.” It’s going to be a 2D, top-down pixel art game. Think old Pokémon meets Stardew Valley. The story follows a boy surviving the zombie apocalypse in the swamps of Louisiana, living with his parents and little sister in a small sanctuary city of about 30 other survivors. Your goal? Protect the town, build defenses, make sure the people have food, water, and supplies. Go on expeditions out into the vast unknown. Defeat tribes of bandits, raiders and voodoo cultists. And uncover the secrets that lay beyond the walls of…

Destinus.

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If you’re interested in following along, check it out on GitHub:
👉 github.com/bookisonfire/Destinus

Want to reach out? Email me:
📫 dbook7 at proton.me

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Thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed yourself—and I can’t wait to share more with you soon.
Peace.