My story

I started working at fourteen, bussing tables at a restaurant in Tennessee. Through high school I worked in kitchens, took overnight shifts at a gym, and later bartended and waited tables. Service work taught me to stay organized when everything is happening at once.

After high school I moved into healthcare. I took a CNA course and worked overnights caring for patients with dementia and patients recovering from strokes. I moved to a hospital cardiology floor, supporting patients recovering from bypass surgery and stent procedures, and then worked as a phlebotomist. In 2022 I moved to Chicago and worked in emergency patient transport at a massive hospital.

In October 2023 I was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin's lymphoma.

I kept working through chemotherapy for as long as I could. When I couldn't, I needed something I could do from home that still let me build something real. I had played and modded ARK for years, so I started taking The Unreal Engine seriously.

Modding turned into commissions, and commissions became my main income during treatment. The work kept growing from there: game modes for content creators, an event map for a games convention, contract Blueprint work on official event content, and the tools and applications I build now.

I still work in healthcare, as an EMT and in cardiology testing, and I'm building toward a full-time career in game and software development. The two fields reward the same habits: write things down clearly, stay calm when something breaks, and own the outcome.

That's how I got here. The work itself is on the rest of this site.