Before 2020, I was busy working as a professional musician(oboist) in Southern California. I was working all of the time (80+ hours/per week) doing indie recording sessions, teaching music lessons, performing concerts, and running an online sheet music company. I loved my life as a musician even though it was very busy and stressful at times. I never imagined doing anything else until the pandemic hit.
When the pandemic hit, I lost all of my work and was forced to stay home. It was depressing not being able to perform and teach. So I put all of my energy into the only thing I could do, which was my online sheet music company. During this difficult time, race relations in the United States were at an all-time high. This sparked a conversation within many industries about the lack of diversity and inclusion. The classical music industry was no exception.
I started to have friends reach out to me about black composers within the classical world. As a black classical musician, I was very familiar with the lack of diversity in the classical music world. I had already researched and performed music by black composers for years. I had the resources and knowledge to help my friends and colleagues find music by black composers. This prompted me to start the Black Excellence Music Project .
I wanted to create an educational resource where people could learn about black composers and their music. So I decided to learn how to code and build the website myself. I started learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript with freeCodeCamp and immediately fell in love with the resources and community. I finished the Black Excellence Music Project after months of coding and shared with my community. The site was well received and I found a new passion which was coding.
I never imagined that I would be a software engineer. I always assumed that I would be a musician for the rest of my life. And in some ways, I am still a musician, but now I am also a software engineer.
I have traded in making oboe reeds and practicing Mozart for fixing bugs and working with JavaScript. This blog is dedicated to sharing my story and what is going on in my life as a software engineer.