The Things I Wanted to Make

This essay was originally commissioned but ultimately wasn’t accepted for publication. I’m sharing an edited version here. When I was a teenager, my family took a weekend road trip from Warwick, Rhode Island to Mystic, Connecticut. It was on that trip that I purchased Billy Breathes, the 1996 album by the band Phish, from a head shop in Mystic Village – I often wonder if the shop is still there. From that moment on, I was hooked, and not a single day has gone by that I haven’t listened to Phish. Despite growing up in New England, where Phish often played because they were an up-and-coming band from Vermont, I didn’t get to see Phish often. Instead, Phish became the soundtrack to what would go on to dominate my personal life: programming. In 1998, my first job was that of a tech support agent at an early tech startup. There, between work – which I did after getting home from high school – and my home life, all I did was program. I programmed and listened to Phish. If you’re not…