If you have ever checked out any of my blog posts before, you may have noticed a theme in them. Well, besides the fact that the majority of them are about Rust. They are all educational material in one way or another. There are a couple of reasons.

One, It is a great way for YOU to learn

A lot of what I write about I have usually just learned about, or I am learning it while I write the post. The act of learning something, then teaching what you learned with others is such a great way to learn. It forces you to take these ideas and put them into words, much like keeping notes while learning, but usually in a much more organized way since you are expecting to share them with other.

It also forces you to take these ideas and theories and to put them into practice. In every blog post I have ever written, I have had to go back and rewrite a section because of a misunderstanding that I would've just glazed over and never thought about again. But since I am writing these to share with others, I want to make sure it is correct and the reader is able to follow along. Not to mention, a lot of the time I am usually writing about some "hack" or "Band-Aid" fix only to end up rubber ducky debugging myself and finding a much better solution.

A lot of the content I write about is usually pretty obscured. Be it running rust on a 3DS, or Rust on a "10¢ microcontroller". Not always, but a lot of the time these projects are hard to get going or lack beginner friendly documentation. No fault of the maintainers. It's hard to write a feature rich project that you learned all the nuances to, spent weeks, months, or even years on. Then try to put yourself back into the perspective of newbie who just landed on the repo page and wants to try it out. That's where I come in. I love to learn. I also love to teach others, so I try to compile what I learn as I learn it, so hopefully it helps others from the newcomers' perspective. I may not be the one adding the next amazing feature to a project. However, I at least hope I can make it easier for the person who is to be able to jump in and get to coding without having to learn the setup. To me that is an important part of open source as well, opening that door fully so others from every walk of life and education level can contribute to the project.

Two, A bit more personal

I am sure if you have ever read a blog or social media post by me you have noticed a typo or two, or even a whole different word in place of another one that may sound similar. I do not have a higher education. I have never attended a college lecturer in my life, and I passed high school with the skin of my teeth. Ignorance is never an excuse, but sometimes it is the reason.

I am from a rural small town in Tennessee. My hometown was 300 people, the city I went to for school was 7,000, the county was 30,000 people in total. It is so rural that my mother can still not get high speed internet at her house. Hell, she could not even get city water till 2014. Of course, there is always someone more remote than you, but I use this to paint a picture of my background.

Both of my parents were teachers. My mom still is, and she is coming up on 30 years as a special ed teacher now. Growing up, my father worked at a local factory and attended night school. He went on to become a teacher as well, the history teacher football coach combo. Both of them are first generation diploma holders, children of farmers and labourers.

My father died when I was 15. He had lung cancer, and it was caught much too late. I spent my freshman year of high school in and out of waiting rooms. It was a tragic and hard experience and left a hole in my life. Especially as a teenage male. It's hard to lose that father figure early on and feel like you have to figure it all out on your own. My grades suffered, I found addiction to alcohol early in my life and self-medicated my depression well into my mid 20s by just not dealing with it and pushing it under. It's something I still struggle with to this day.

But as you can imagine, I was not that worried about school. I did graduate on time, but it was a miracle and would've not been possible if it were not for the educators who helped me out along the way. But it was a struggle. I was done with it, I had moved out the summer I turned 18, worked long hours to pay rent. I did not want anything else to do with school. Sure, I could have gone, and I have sat in the admissions office more than once. But I could never justify the price tag while trying to work or to take the loans for school. So I never went.

To make a long story short, I spent 18 to 20 jumping from odd jobs to odd job trying to make a living. Then finally one day I got a break, and a friend had told me his company was hiring for a desktop repair technician. He vouched for me, I got an interview and got the job. I spent about 4 years fixing printers and blue screen of deaths. It ended up being a bit of downtime waiting for something to break. So I taught myself to code and fell back in love with learning. There was an internal opening for a developer, they gave me a chance, and it worked out. Been in this position ever since.

Hard work is not always enough. In my culture at least, it is usually expressed that hard work will be enough for you to build a life and to earn a wage to live on. That's not completely true. You do HAVE to do the hard work, you HAVE to learn the skills, you HAVE to be ready for that break, for that chance for someone to take notice of the work done. That's the part they don't tell you. Sure, there are cases where pure merit gets you recognized. It does happen, but more often than not, it's a brothers friends uncles company is looking for someone, and they knew you tinkered with computers. It's a privilege, and personally I think it is dishonest not to recognize it. Yes, I have worked hard to get where I am. Yes, I have spent a lot of time learning. Yes, it was hard and a lot of work. But if someone didnt take a chance to put my name in the mix there is a good chance I would still be making pizzas at Little Caesars.

So you can see why self education is important to me and why I think it is important to share that with others. I cannot always help you with the luck part, but hopefully I can help with the learning part. I think an important aspect of education is the excitement. The joy of learning something new that excites you is magical. If you want to learn and have fun learning. Guess what, good chance you are going to learn. That is why a lot of the stuff I write about is a bit obscured or something fun like writing code to run on a 3DS. It's fun. Not everything I learn can be used in a job search, but I have found out from everything I've written it has given me a better understanding or a base to learn from for my work. Be it critical thinking, or just how to import crates via local paths and git repositories. There is always something to learn, and a good chance it may help you in some way.

There it is. The reason I write. To learn, and to hopefully help teach you something as well. As my grandmother always said, "Education is the one thing no one can ever take from you." I think education and learning is important. It should be free and accessible to anyone. No matter their walk of life or circumstances. So why wouldn't I try and help others while I learn?