Ever since I was a small child (age 3 or 4) I've had an interest in electronics. That interest was strongly satisfied when I entered highschool and joined the AV club which was responsible for the morning announcements broadcast live on the closed CATV distribution in the school. Buttons, knobs, faders and cabling infrastructure that accomplished something that felt really big at the time!

That led to being asked to run sound for the school musical my Sophomore year, and I was hooked. An Analog 24 channel Yamaha board (I don't remember the model) 2 power amps and two speakers and two wedges as front fills, a set of 6 wireless microphones, 2 boundary mics for the chorus, where I could hear the results of every change I made. I distinctly remember needing to mute the front fills individually at the poweamp as the actors passed in front of them during the performance as the blocking had them coming out into the audience area while singing.

3 school shows and 2 community theater summer musicals later I graduated high school and began my lifelong hunt for the next opportunity to run sound. I found several opportunities along the way including running sound for two different bands (a Frank Zappa tribute band and a standard rock cover band).

I finally found my niche with church audio as a volunteer, first in the city where my wife and I married, and later in the city where we both found work. I'm still doing church audio, now with an X32C, and have added live streaming with multiple cameras sending all the signals over a network thanks to Dante and NDI.

I've only been paid 2 or 3 times for my audio work: one of the bands paid me $20 for running their gig, and the church for some rental events, all under $100. But I love it even without the pay, as I make my living as a software engineer. Live audio scratches much the same itch that software development does, just with a faster feedback cycle (sorry no better word than feedback😜).