Introducing Myself

Hello everyone! My name is Devin and I'm from Dallas, Texas. At 22 years old, I am a young entrepreneur and business owner. My goal on Steemit is to inspire, motivate, inform others and drive them to the realizations that I had to learn the hard way after coming one hairline-fracture away from shattering my life permanently. My end-goal is to cultivate a community of informed and motivated individuals who want to push themselves to their limits and succeed in any corner of life in which they are passionate and motivated. Without further ado, let us delve into who I am and how I came to be as I sit here and type this today. NOTE: This will be kind of long but I feel like it's necessary for me to be straight-forward and honest about who I am and how I got to where I'm at; especially in a community of trust and honesty.

The Start of it All

Just over two years ago I was in hell. I was in a downwards spiral of bad decisions, selfishness, and cutting corners. You see, I had it made (as much as any 18 year old could). After high school I went off to Texas A&M to pursue a degree in finance. I had pipe dreams of becoming an investment banker for Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs. I dreamed of the fast life of a hedge fund manager that screwed over his clients and enjoyed all the luxuries of drugs, women, and penthouses. I rushed a fraternity because, like everyone else that I acquainted myself with in high school, it was the cool thing to do. Was it truly what I wanted to do as a person? No. Yet I did it because everyone else was doing it and I wanted to fit in; I was obsessed with fitting in and being "cool".

Eventually, I left the organization. I was disappointed with what being in a fraternity had entailed. It was degrading to myself, degrading to women, and it was changing me for the worse. I had spent thousands of my mother's hard-earned money without thinking twice about how it would make her feel. Why wouldn't I have? After all, being around all of these kids who constantly "swiped daddy's credit card", I felt the need to keep up and fit in no matter how it affected the people closest to me.

After I dropped out of the organization I became depressed. I had started to realize that being "cool" really wasn't that "cool". I had no friends anymore and no one to talk to. I lost any motivation and drive that I had previously had to socialize and network with my peers. I stopped going to class and sat around all day doing nothing but smoking weed. I lost my drive, vigilance, and confidence.

Where It Gets out of Control

I came back to Dallas and began attending a community college. While living in an on-campus apartment complex I began to become unhappy again. There was no "college experience" to be had at a community college. I wanted that university lifestyle again. So I met a guy named Nate and we began to hangout a lot. We would do drugs, go out, and I would spend my mother's money after I blew through mine. I stopped going to the classes my mother paid for and started to trash the apartment I was living in (that she was also paying for). Nate moved in and he was going broke too and with us spending all of that time broke and not going to class, we began to scheme.

We decided that we were going to sell drugs. At first we were making a lot of money and, in that time, I was loving life. I was getting that fast life I had dreamed about only a year prior of drugs, women, and penthouses (minus the penthouses). After a while my mother had caught on and she wanted nothing to do with me. My relationship with my family began to disintegrate and I became extremely unhappy. So what did I do? I began to use the opiates that I was selling and I stopped selling drugs altogether and started to use. I became "addicted".

Facing the Consequences and Coming to Realizations

One morning I got a knock at my door. It was the police. They came in and searched through my apartment. I was arrested and put in jail and no one would answer my calls. It was then that I was truly alone with just me, myself, and I. No one to be around and hangout with to hide myself from myself. Just me, a jail cell, and a mirror. Eventually I looked in this mirror and I began to cry. It was in this moment I finally realized: I'm not "the man", I'm a selfish piece of crap. I realized that my need for immediate gratification, my laziness, and my lack of patience got me to where I was. It was the realization I needed.

I called a bail bonds company, got myself out of jail, and walked to my father's house. He took me in, made me play by his rules, and things started to turn up. I re-enrolled at a university nearby, and continued my studies. This time I went to class, did my homework, and passed tests with flying colors. But I still had a feeling of dissatisfaction. I wanted control over my destiny. I wanted to truly maximize my potential and the synchronicities of life began to work the cogs of their machines.

A New Beginning

An old friend called me one night and wanted to come over to have a couple drinks. He began to talk about running a business. Like me, he didn't want to go to school. He didn't want some institution of indoctrination dictating his future; only for another institution of indoctrination (company) to even further dictate the rest of his adult life. So he started spinning off all of these ideas he had. They were great ideas but we both lacked one key thing to make them happen: money. So I reached into my backpack and pulled out a Python Programming textbook I bought to read in my free time and told him to buy it.

We both learned the language. We began to draft wire-frames for applications and web-platforms and we found our idea. We both dropped out of school, sold our cars, and invested all of our savings into our business. We filed our company. We made some money, bought an apartment, and bought a car to share. We deleted our propaganda-infested social media accounts, stopped watching TV, and stopped going out on the weekends. We ditched smoking weed and drinking altogether and became obsessed with one thing: adding value to the lives of other people through the innovation of intuitive platforms and services. And the rest has become not only history, but the future.

In Conclusion

It took all of this for me to realize how to be a good person and strive for success in the correct and ethical way, but through this experience I have learned a lot about life, motivation, ethics, and success. I have joined Steemit to inform others of what I have learned and motivate people to change for the better and strive after their passions. My blog will cover things like "How Crypto-Currencies Work" to "How to Build a Foundation for Your Business Model". If you read this post I want to thank you and I hope that this post has started to turn some of the gears in your mind about your own life and passions.

Parting Advice

One piece of advice that is key to your own success: "Deny yourself immediate gratification if it affects your long-term well-being,"