Dear kid

This is a letter to that kid who loved to make things.

I want you to know we never lost it. The itch to build, to hunt for solutions, to find something interesting enough that you'd solve it over and over in a thousand different ways until you could rebuild it from scratch — and then make it better.

Because of you, I am who I am.

And I can tell you that what we're studying, what we're doing, what we do for a living — it's exactly what we dreamed about. Even if right now you have no idea what an engineer is, or what applied math with hyper-complex algorithms bound by a rational limit approaching zero is supposed to mean.

Relax. I don't fully get it either. (Kind of do, though. So I win.)

We adults forget that we used to stand somewhere else.

And lately I'd pretty much forgotten you were ever there. That you cleared a good stretch of the road so I could pick what I wanted to do next.

I can't tell you it won't get hard. Being an adult is hard sometimes. Honestly, it's sh**. My advice: never grow up.

But since you're going to have to anyway, I can promise you two things. One: I'm never leaving you alone. Two: God is never leaving you alone.

We've been through a lot. Things keep happening. There are decisions that cost us and still cost me. There are ideas so abstract that even I don't understand them. And there are things that look impossible to you today that are a regular Tuesday for me.

Okay, let me give you an example, otherwise none of this is going to land.

We made a system run sixteen times faster than it used to. And it wasn't just one — it was two of them. We impressed our boss.

(Give yourself credit. Sometimes you have to celebrate a little.)

Though sometimes we celebrate badly. We drink a Coke knowing full well what it's going to do to us. Or a Monster knowing it's a terrible idea. Every now and then we make the wrong call. Other times we get way too excited.

And there will be people who get mad at us. Sometimes because we let them down. And sometimes — I only worked this one out recently — because they love us enough to want to protect us.

Everything you're doing means something, even if it doesn't look like it right now.

And I feel like a bit of a hypocrite telling you that, because I also think what I do means nothing sometimes. And I'm scared of the future. Simple as that.

We didn't get here the easy way. We did what we could, and we're still trying to reach a place that — I'll be honest — I still can't quite name. There are a lot of dreams and a lot of goals. I couldn't tell you which one is next.

What I can tell you is that none of this would ever have been dreamed up if it weren't for a kid who dared to imagine more than he could carry.

Thank you for everything you did. That kid is the one who got me here. He inspired me more than anything else ever has.

I'm not promising I'll make it easy. I'm not promising it turns out perfect. A lot of your plans are going to fall apart fast. Sometimes all you get to say is "okay, what's next?" And other times you have to say "I need a break" — and actually take it.

And now, on behalf of that kid and on my own: thank you to everyone reading this. Thank you to everyone who makes what I do worth doing.

I hope that one day you get to write a letter to that kid too. To that little girl. Because I'm fairly sure that every person who is something today was once someone small who dreamed, who got it wrong, and who eventually carried them all the way to wherever they're standing now.

Kid: keep playing. Keep having fun. If you can, install something called Fortnite — though you'll find it a few years later, and you're going to love it. And if not, start with Minecraft. That one you'll really love.

Remember to call your friends once you have a phone. (By the way: you're getting a phone. Small detail I forgot.)

And when you find out what code is — because you will — keep being you.

I love you. Take care.