The title says it all. Coming from Diablo 3, said by Cain; reality is sometimes renewed through games.
I start there because I’ve faced a silent struggle moving forward. One I will share over time and not integral to what I write today.
Today is about new beginnings, waking to new dawns realizing what truly matters to life. People. A reality few people understand the scope of today. But is really ingrained into the story of AniMap; from original creators, Art Lassagne and Adrian Ettlinger; to me and continuing their story and the story of AniMap. It is from Art’s son’s I proudly took over moving this story forward.
However, the story also expanded with incorporating John Long’s work on the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, the legacy of my Dad who helped guide me in my early years to who I am today.
It will be journey of self exposure of who I am deeper than any coming before I decided to carry this story and legacy forward. My story is driving the development of AniMap version 5.0 forward. A story making every part of the finished product a personal connection to my life and what makes this work so important.
What started as a young person with complexities beyond society able to understand other than to cast it out as an outcast. Outcast was a result, not an intention by the people of society. Outcast is a survival mechanism and not an intentional act.
My young interest was purely methodical, A->B->C and any break in the logic is either a problem already or will become the break to bring a system down. This lead me to options.
- Doctor – I cannot do this because I would not cope with telling others I failed in bringing a miracle when they needed one most.
- Psychologist – No, already in the late 70’s this profession was diverging from the human connection to making it more clinical.
So direction lead me to mechanical engineering. Unknown to everyone was in 1986 when I graduated, the bottom fell out of engineering and a multi-state registered engineer could be hired for about $1 per hour more than a new graduate.
Next up architecture. Working there from 1988 until post 9/11 when in November of 2001 the bottom was completely gone on architecture forcing many to find new career directions. Leading me back to one first love, computer science. A field I worked in throughout my career in engineering and architecture writing custom LISP programs for AutoCad. Working in COBOL, Basic and several other languages as a hobby giving my work away freely as that made not only me happy, but more important the one getting the gift I was able to give.
The work profession is given in brevity with intent. These are stories comprising this series I will share as AniMap 5 development continues. It will help build the value of AniMap, history and genealogy as a product of people and their stories rather than dates and names.
At every stage of life history was my passion. History rarely pays the bills so it remained second best to survival.
In the late-mid 90’s Dad started researching his family genealogy, passing in 1997 before he even really got a start. But it was a short strong connection for us, history and technology collide and my full understanding of both worlds. Carrying forward what he started became a drive to complete.
Understand for me genealogy is not vital records, nor a date-name foundation. It is the story of the lives of people that is genealogy. It is understanding from a different perspective than most. You when born until adulthood are already part of a centuries old story already unfolding before you ever arrived. Your chapter in this story beings when you reach the age of maturity; 18 in the U.S. and are now 100% fully responsible for your self. The uniqueness of my thought process starts here.
We have all heard the phrase “you cannot know where you are going until you know where you’ve been.”. The point is genealogy is the story of where you have been. Not in context to you. Where you start in life began from choices your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents made long before and after you came along. You personally have no choice that you graduated high school where you did. That is your parent’s story; not yours, you at these times are only part of their chapter in your families story.
So now the time has come to not only tell my chapter, helping people after decades of placing me as an outcast to see the real me. I’ve taken the title outcast willingly and wore it as a badge of honor; not because you gave it to me unwillingly; but because doing so protected someone who may otherwise be extremely hurt by carrying the label.
And now, moving forward throughout the full development of AniMap 5; the story will now be told. No shinny armor, nothing but bare reality of truth.
So please, stay a while and listen.