Two years ago, I didn’t know Chris Adamson existed. I was taking my first semester of the iOS development degree at Madison College when I first found out about him. I was taking the Objective-C class mostly because I needed to have a full load in order to continue to collect unemployment benefits. I was planning to follow the Java track, get a job for a health insurance company, and lead a normal mundane existence. That all changed when I heard two words that would change the course of my life: Core Audio.

In my previous life, I went to school for audio engineering. I learned Pro Tools and Logic. One of my teachers was talking about the extreme guys who programmed those pieces of software and they fascinated me. I had no idea how anyone would program a digital audio workstation, so I kind of forgot about it.

When my teacher Eric Knapp mentioned Core Audio, he said it was one of the hardest things to learn in the Apple development environment. It was a toss-up between Core Audio and OpenGL. Me being the good little masochist that I am, I decided I would learn both of them. (Having tried my hand at both of them, I am awarding Core Audio with the trophy for being harder to learn.)

I bought Chris’s book on Core Audio and made the incredibly stupid decision to take it on vacation with me for beach reading. After seeing the unfamiliar and deprecated “NSPool” object, I freaked out and realized I had to work a lot harder in order to learn enough to understand what the hell is going on.

In February 2013 Eric told me that Chris would be speaking at a conference in Chicago. The conference was in two weeks. I was a poor, unemployed college student, so I had to scrape together enough money to be able to go down and attend this conference so that I could meet Chris.

I saw him around the conference, but he was a big important author and I didn’t really know what to say, so I didn’t approach him. On the last day of the conference, Chris did a talk on audio on iOS. I sat in one of the front rows and peppered him with a lot of impertinent questions about audio programming on non-iOS platforms. Having been on the receiving end of questions like this in my own talks, I commend Chris for his patience and restraint at not shoving my Ravenclaw scarf down my throat.

We wound up talking after his talk and having lunch together. He was one of the first people I have encountered that I felt completely in synch talking to. I wore a Doctor Who shirt trying to bait someone into talking to me about it. Chris saw it and commented that he would ask about it, but everyone and their brother was into Doctor Who. I pulled out my phone and showed him a picture of my pug, Delia Derbyshire. When I said her name, his face lit up and he got really excited. He was the first person I met who knew who Delia was without me having to explain it. Eric asked who Delia was and we were talking over one another explaining who she was. I was so happy. I was grateful to him for hanging out with me and talking about my stupid geeky audio stuff.

Several months later I got to attend CocoaConf Boston and spend a whole day with Chris doing Core Audio. That day was one of the best days of my life. I was having a lot of problems at that point in time and I felt like my life was falling apart. Spending the summer working through the Core Audio book knowing I would get to do this workshop in the fall gave me focus when I needed something to get me through my life.

Chris and I were able to work our way through our initial awkwardness due to both of us having some social anxiety issues to become friends. I stopped worrying that I was bothering him by commenting on his tweets and I began to feel comfortable asking him for advice.

Earlier this year I was again trying to figure out what I was doing with my life. I had a contract job that was ending in a few weeks and I had to figure out what I wanted to do. I applied for a QA position at a company in town whose employees I knew and liked a lot. Something in my gut told me that I didn’t want to do this job. I knew I needed a steady paycheck, but I just had a gut feeling that I wasn’t supposed to take this job.

I went to Chris and explained my situation. He patiently read through my long rambling email and responded back, “I should tell you to take the stable job with the decent paycheck and the nice coworkers, but I have an ulterior motive. I need a coauthor for my book and I would need you to start after your contract is over.” I immediately wrote back to the company and told them I was no longer available.

Like all recovering journalism and English majors, I always wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write books and stories. I have absolutely no idea why I wanted to be a writer. I don’t remember if I actually liked writing or I just liked the idea of being a writer. I sort of gave up on the idea of being a writer in high school when I realized everything I wrote was crap. I realized if I wanted to be a writer I needed to have some actual experiences. I had to get out of my comfort zone and change my perspective of the world. Sometime in college I just sort of decided not to think about writing for a decade to give myself a chance to actually find something to write about.

I began writing again last year around the same time I met Chris. I had another developer recommend starting a blog and I have written at least one blog post a month since I started my blog. I know a lot of people do podcasts because they are “easier”, but I have always found that writing really helps me get my thoughts out of my head.

Back in March at CocoaConf Daniel Steinberg had a session called “Book Chat.” It was for anyone who had written or wanted to write a book. The only other person there besides Daniel and I was Chris. Many people over the last year have tried to talk me out of writing a book. I heard the usual arguments that books take a long time and they don’t generate any money. Daniel asked me what I wanted to get out of a book. I told him I wanted to be able to type my name into Amazon and have a result pop up. I also wanted to take the cover of my book, frame it, and put it on my wall. That was all.

Today marks the culmination of a dream for me. I have a book I wrote being published. We are on a public beta and there is still more work for me to do on the book. But it is real. It is happening.

I am thinking about where I was a year ago. I had weathered several failures and I felt broken. I had no idea what the following year would bring. I had the single-minded determination that I had to finish the Core Audio book and go to Boston. I didn’t know how or why, but I knew that it was a turning point in my life and I threw everything I had at that.

Going to Boston changed my life. It changed my perspective of who I could be. I was pitched by several companies there that I didn’t imagine would even be interested in me. None of those leads worked out because I was just too messed up to take advantage of them, but they made me realize what kind of person I could be if I wanted to. Josh Smith had me talk to Dave Klein about speaking in Chicago this year. I didn’t think I could be a speaker until that happened. I applied for another talk that happened a few weeks before CocoaConf Chicago, which wound up being my first tech talk, but that would never have happened without Josh Smith.

I love this community. I love that I came here from a really crappy background and that I found people who were willing to accept me for who I am. I am happy that I haven’t been discarded because I am damaged. My damage could even be considered an asset because I bring uniqueness and experience with it.

All of these people keep talking about the importance of teaching young girls to code, like somehow my generation of women is too old to learn new things and we are a lost cause. Meeting someone like Chris whose experience was so like my own and knowing that I could have another chance at life gave me hope, which gave me the tenacity to endure all of my various disappointments. He gave me strength to accept all the broken, dirty pieces of myself and accept that they are part of who I am. He woke me up and made me think about all the parts of myself that I had numbed because they were too painful to deal with.

I went from a world of “No” to a world where anything is possible with enough work and tenacity. These last two years has been a miracle.

“iOS 8 SDK Development” is my first book. I hope there will be many more where this one came from. I treasure this book because it represents something I didn’t think I would ever have. It is also a project I got to work on with a great friend whose presence has enriched my life.

I wish I could go back two years and tell the earlier me that I would meet these people who would change my life. But I can’t. Spoilers, sweetie.