I started out studying architecture. Then I switched to an art major, spent some time on interior design after that, and somewhere in the middle of it I did the arithmetic on how the money compared to tech. So I finished a computer science degree, then a cybersecurity one on top.
That's the sensible version, and it's true. What it leaves out is that I've been an artist the whole time.
Fourteen years of not painting
I didn't paint for fourteen years. There was no decision behind it. Years just go the way they go, and something you used to do turns into something you used to do.
By the time I thought about it again I'd lost touch with it, and I definitely wasn't as good as people who'd kept at it the whole time. That thought stops most people. It very nearly stopped me.
Buhata na
I said it to myself in Cebuano, one of the languages spoken in the Philippines. Buhata na.
Roughly, it means do it. Not encouragement. Closer to a shrug. Get on with it.
So my wife came with me and we bought paint and supplies from Hobby Lobby and Michael's, drove home, and I started.
Three hours, and it stopped being mine
I finished an abstract painting in about three hours. My wife had been watching, got curious, picked up a brush, and ended up painting it with me. It's hers as much as mine now. That wasn't the plan and it's the better outcome.
It's no masterpiece and I won't pretend otherwise. But it exists, which is more than the version that stayed in my head for fourteen years managed.
A week later
I'd been frustrated with productivity apps for a long time. Too many of them, each holding a piece of my life, none of them talking to each other. The ones that came close wanted more money than the problem was worth.
A week after the painting, the same thought showed up in the same shape. If nobody's going to solve this properly at a reasonable price, I'll do it myself.
I started building that week. Exactly one week after finishing the painting.
Hence the name
Buhata is the app I couldn't find, built by somebody who spent fourteen years not painting and then painted anyway.
The word isn't advice I'm handing anybody. It's what I said to myself, and the app is what happened next.