How Technology Helped Change My Life — The Story Behind Cheap Houses
If you normally visit ExtraHelp.us for help with Windows, computers, the internet, passwords, printers, or other technology, you may wonder why I'm talking about a memoir.
There is actually a very strong connection.
Long before I worked with computers, I was a poor kid growing up in rural northern Alabama. My family moved from one cheap house to another, usually because it was all we could afford. Some had cracked walls, little insulation, no indoor plumbing, and very few comforts.
I picked cotton, hauled pulpwood, baled hay, cut fence posts, and did whatever work was available. I wore hand-me-down clothes and sometimes put cardboard inside worn-out shoes because buying another pair wasn't always an option.
At the time, I didn't really think of us as poor.
That was simply life.
Then I Discovered Technology
One of the small things that helped change the direction of my life was something called Future Cards.
They were cards describing technologies that people believed might become important in the future. One of those technologies was something I had never actually seen:
Computers.
To a young boy living in rural Alabama, computers might as well have been science fiction.
But something about them fascinated me.
Those cards planted a seed. They showed me that there was a world beyond the one I could see around me.
Technology represented possibility.
From an Air Force Medic to Computers
At seventeen, I joined the United States Air Force and became a medic.
That decision opened another door.
During my military career, I continued learning whenever an opportunity presented itself. Eventually, my interests in medicine and computers came together and led me into medical information systems.
In 1992, I was recognized as the United States Air Force Medical Information Systems Non-Commissioned Officer of the Year.
After leaving the military, I continued working in information technology and eventually built a career in corporate IT.
I didn't begin that journey with a computer science degree.
I began with curiosity.
I learned things one piece at a time.
And that is something I hope readers of ExtraHelp.us remember.
You Don't Have to Know Everything About Computers
Technology can be intimidating.
People sometimes look at someone who understands computers and assume that person has always understood them.
That usually isn't true.
Every person who knows how to use a computer once had to learn how to turn one on.
Every person who understands Windows once had to figure out where things were located.
Every experienced computer user has clicked the wrong button, made mistakes, forgotten passwords, broken something, and had to figure out how to fix it.
I certainly did.
You don't have to become a computer expert.
You just have to be willing to learn the next thing.
That philosophy is one of the reasons I created ExtraHelp.us: to explain technology in plain language so ordinary computer users don't have to feel intimidated by it.
The Story Behind Cheap Houses
My new memoir, Cheap Houses: A Memoir of Poverty and Reinvention in Rural America, tells the larger story.
It begins long before computers entered my life.
It's about poverty, family, fear, hard work, opportunity, military service, technology, mistakes, persistence, and reinvention.
It is not a story claiming that if you simply believe in yourself everything will magically work out.
Life isn't that simple.
Life can be unfair. Opportunity matters. Hard work matters. Luck matters a LOT.
But persistence matters too.
None of those things guarantees success, but they can improve the odds. Sometimes a seemingly insignificant opportunity—a book, a teacher, a job, a conversation, or even a few cards describing something called a computer—can change the direction of a person's life.
You may not recognize that moment when it happens.
I certainly didn't.
From Cheap Houses to a Career in Technology
Looking back, it is remarkable to think about the distance between that boy reading about computers on Future Cards and the career that eventually followed.
That's one reason technology has always meant more to me than machines, software, and networks.
Technology can create opportunity.
Learning how to use it can make someone more independent, help them find information, communicate with family, qualify for a job, manage their finances, start a business, or simply feel more confident in a world that increasingly depends on computers.
That is what ExtraHelp.us is about.
And in a much broader sense, that is part of what Cheap Houses is about too.
Your beginnings shape you.
But they don't necessarily have to determine where you finish.
ORDER CHEAP HOUSES ON AMAZON
Available in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover editions.
— Stevie G. Davis
— Stevie G. Davis
