Personal Essay

About Me and My Influences

A look at the people, places, and art that shaped who I am

Around puberty, I immigrated to the U.S. from the Caribbean. Immediately, I had to make significant cultural adjustments. As an adult, I'm aware that I've completely discarded my cultural heritage. But importantly, my new influences molded me into the person I am today.

In my home country, prior to my migration to the U.S., a relative visited us. I spent time with them listening to them speak and conversing. Within that time, I developed their accent. So I believe that even back then I had a chameleon personality that absorbs the behavior of my peers.

Music, Social Circles, and Books

The first absorption was my taste in music. I attended a middle school near the Museum of Natural History in New York City. The school included students from different income brackets, but none of that played a role in social circles. There were three distinct social circles: the preppy kids, the urban boys, the urban girls. Eventually, kids sorted into their social circles by natural selection.

Nature destined me to the urban boys social circle, where most times it felt that everyone was punching down — even the other social groups. All of this was just a period of acceptance and mental adjustment to the social hierarchy of middle school. This definitely included my cultural absorption of my new in-group.

I believe the topic of music was discussed in English class. I can't recall the teacher's name, but we definitely remembered the books we read in that class: Night by Elie Wiesel and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe — two captivating books that stayed with me forever. The teacher was asking students about their favorite music, or maybe playing the radio — Hot 97. Either way, that was my first introduction to Hip-Hop and R&B.

The Music That Raised Me

Music helped me find verbal expression when I didn't know how to express myself any other way.

Back to music — why is it important to me? As a kid, I don't think I knew how to express myself. I was verbally intelligent, but maybe that was restrained by culture shock. Music helped me find verbal expression. The first album I bought from bootleggers in Downtown Brooklyn was the Ruff Ryders album — a direct byproduct of my new social circle. It was a cassette tape, but that didn't fully stick with me.

Soon I discovered a rap artist called Styles P. He was very expressive of his pain and his thoughts toward violence. I was never a violent person — it takes an extreme boiling point for me to want to hit someone. Styles P's music was my mental rage room.

During that time, Nutty Professor 2 was released and I bought the soundtrack on CD, which included "Hay Papi" by Jay-Z. I think that song, along with the "Big Pimpin'" music video, added Jay-Z to my list of musical influences. He spoke of pleasures in his life. It was like the grass-is-greener insight. A yin and yang of Styles P and Jay-Z were a core staple of my teenage years. Later, Cam'ron was added because he blended both Jay-Z and Styles P into one voice in his music. There are some other minor musical influences, but those three artists were pivotal to me.

Computers, Curiosity, and a Career Beginning

During that same time period, I developed an interest in computers. My mother attended CUNY City College of New York. During her classes, I used her ID to visit the library where I got to play on the computers. Nothing technical at the time, but just that exposure was enough to build familiarity. Later, we got a computer at home along with AOL internet service.

Consequently, my mom got me a summer internship with LaGuardia Community College through New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program. As I was developing an interest in computers — discovering IRC networks, making remote friends who cared deeply about learning assembly language, C programming, Perl, machine-level code, file binary formats, and OS architecture — I got to work as a computer tech intern at the community college.

That experience spearheaded my interest in computers. LaGuardia Community College was a learning lab. I didn't have to read a book to learn how to replace a floppy drive, CD-ROM, or CPU. It was intuitive, on-the-job training fueled by helpdesk tickets that I accompanied the full-time techs on. Eventually, I was tasked to handle things on my own.

Much later, when I was no longer in that NYC job program, I went to the helpdesk manager to ask him for a reference for a job at CompUSA — the Best Buy of its day. Instead, he offered me a part-time job at the college. That sequence of events was an inflection point into my current career in IT.

New Reading, New Influences

My social group definitely changed because of my online influences. One of my close acquaintances told me about an essay by Paul Graham called "Hackers and Painters." I read that essay and others in Paul Graham's book Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age. The book was good stuff. More influential, though, was The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder — that book spurred my imagination.

Still, my major influences were those three rap artists: Styles P, Jay-Z, and Cam'ron. Not for long, because soon I became obsessed with Donald Knuth. I bought all his books — even though I couldn't quite understand them. I bought The Art of Computer Programming, Concrete Mathematics, and 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated. Sadly, The Art of Computer Programming never made it to me. I didn't get the slip from the post office in time, the books sat there for an extended period, and they were returned to the sender, bookpool.com. Although I couldn't fully understand Donald Knuth's work, I've been a fan and added him to my list of influences ever since.

Finance, Fitness, and Warren Buffett

My high school had a specialization in economics and finance. I took an accounting class that taught me how to manage a ledger. Later, I used that knowledge to put my finances into GnuCash while I worked at the community college. A temporary social group brought Warren Buffett to my attention. It was fascinating that a person could accumulate so much wealth, and that his process was simple and calculable. Of course, I tried to read all his books — but there was only a book by Benjamin Graham and another by Mary Buffett, plus the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters. I wasn't quite obsessed enough to read those. Warren Buffett is definitely a major influence in my life. He's a significant reason why I never bought Bitcoin.

I always loved running as a pastime for clarity, and later I started enjoying exercising at the gym. Weight lifting definitely replaced running as my tool for clarity.

No Neat Bow

There is no neat bow tie on this, but this is a summary of the things that have greatly influenced my life and the person I've become today. There are probably some significant oversights and personal details I intentionally left out. As it stands, if you wanted to understand how my brain works, the lines above will give you a solid understanding of the influences that shaped me into an adult.

Personal Essay — About Me and My Influences