Thoughts

I was making a good amount of money, like a senior developer from Texas, from bed with my girlfriend, living near Fortuna, a paradise in Costa Rica. Spending a tiny fraction of that every month on home and food. A luxury, right? I had saved enough in my country to live at least two years doing nothing. I was excited to start something, so at the end of December 2025 I decided to prepare to go to

Getting fired was the best thing that happened to my career. Not because it felt good. Because it forced me to find out what I actually was. At 19, I got fired. The reason wasn't politics. It wasn't bad luck. It wasn't a mean boss. I got fired because I didn't know enough. Not enough about development. Not enough about project management. That's a hard sentence to write. It's easier to say "it

At 20 I was making around $120,000 a year from Costa Rica. In August 2025 I started walking away from all of it. This is why. Let me start with the number, because it's the part people ask about. In 2025 I was making around $10,000 a month. About $120,000 a year. I was 20. I live in Costa Rica. I never finished college. For someone my age, in my country, that's a record. I don't say that to br

Do you remember being a student? Were you the one who made your teacher explode, or the quiet studious type? I was the second one (I still am—I was 17 when I wrote this). But the first type, along with other reasons, caused a problem that Fabricio and I noticed: **teacher anxiety**. Yes, anxiety and depression. According to the U.S. National Institute of Education (IES), more than 57% of universi

Living in a rural place with my upper-middle-class parents outside the city, not wanting to do what a typical kid does at 16—play video games, have fun at parties, or use substances. With an anxiety to learn new skills and build a project, in less than 2 weeks I managed to learn WordPress, and quickly landed an important client who owned a shopping center with more than 50 stores, for whom I built