I started out studying architecture. Then I switched to an art major, then spent some time on interior design, and somewhere in there I did the arithmetic and realised how the money compared to tech. So I finished a computer science degree, and later a cybersecurity one on top of it.
That is the sensible version of the story, and it is true. The part it leaves out is that I have been an artist the whole time.
Fourteen years of not painting
I did not paint for fourteen years. Not a deliberate decision, just the way years go: something you used to do becomes something you used to do.
By the time I thought about it again, I had lost touch with it. I was certainly not as good as people who had kept at it that whole time. That is the thought that stops most people, and it very nearly stopped me.
Buhata na
I told myself, in Cebuano, one of the languages spoken in the Philippines: Buhata na.
It translates roughly as: do it. Not as encouragement, and not as a slogan. Closer to a shrug. Get on with it.
So I did. 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 alone
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 is hers as much as mine now, which was not the plan and is the better outcome.
It is not a masterpiece. I am not going to pretend it is. But it exists, which is more than the version of it that stayed in my head for fourteen years.
A week later
I had been frustrated with productivity apps for a long time. Too many of them, each one holding a piece of my life, none of them talking to each other, and the ones that came close wanted more money than the problem was worth.
A week after the painting, the same thought arrived in the same shape. If nobody is going to solve this properly at a reasonable price, then I will do it myself.
I started building the same week. Exactly one week after finishing that painting.
Hence the name
Buhata is the app I could not find, built by somebody who spent fourteen years not painting and then painted anyway.
The word is not advice I am giving anybody. It is what I said to myself, and the app is what happened next.