Who is Devin Damon Shinkle?

Early Musical Exploration and Technology

In my Elementary School years, I was blessed with the opportunity to try nearly any instrument of my heart's desire: so I gave eight a generous attempt—baritone horn, saxophone, trumpet, flute, clarinet, all but percussion and string in those days. I looked pretty ridiculous, dragging a giant baritone horn up 3 flights of school stairs, on a bus, and off, when the case was as large as I was.

Then, suddenly, a dozen bookshelves full of books were carted away and replaced with computers. We were encouraged to learn programming, but I instantly became addicted to the unlimited access to knowledge at my fingertips.

Becoming an Autodidact

I became autodidactic around age 7 with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding. In Middle School, I was voted Class Bookworm—a worthy title. At the time, I would read 3–5 books at the same time: whichever flavor of the hour I was in the mood for. Poetry, science fiction and fact, religious and scholarly material as much as I could tolerate, and Merlinian tales from a bygone era when my temporal lobe needed a break. This was before color phones, or even the tablet, so my access to the internet was brief compared to the kids of today.

The Arrival of the PC

Bringing home my first Compaq computer (later to be acquired by HP) was one of the most memorable days of my life. Using America Online, I would take over our only house phone line to dial into the World Wide Web blossoming and growing right before my eyes. The days of digging through old medical journals to learn about my own anatomy were over.

Communication Challenges and Language Study

Being fond of learning, I also became fond of communicating by typing. With verbal speech, for me, it was a nightmare.

Nose in the books, I learned to eloquently use my native language to such a degree that I became alienated from many of my peers and teachers. I would describe my feelings, hopes, dreams, or realizations—and many would just look at me like they got hit by a shovel.

Growing up in a town with more cows than people, it turned out, creates a strange discomfort in the wonderful simplefolk that enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of whatever they want—but communication is key to any healthy relationship.

I did panic quite a bit: an existential crisis in those young, tender years. The dilemma continued to haunt me to this day. Neither of my parents graduated high school either, and were allergic to literature.

That led me down what would become a formative part of my self-upbringing: relearning my own language. Before becoming a teenager, I had studied the root words that English was based off of—Latin, and the Latin mistranslations of Greek. At this moment, I knew that I achieved something wonderful, but it also became a curse. From that moment on, I had to translate what people said, interpret their intent based on body language and past context.

I do believe in divine providence, and count all my experiences as a blessing. This achievement allowed me to be correct and direct with my words—outspoken, honest, and precise with my language. The language experience also opened up strong neural pathways to the parts of our brains that process language, so I would recommend what I just described for homeschool curricula.

Youth, Maturation, and Military Preparation

So blessed, I had constructed my own cognitive functionality based upon thousands of years of literature before hitting puberty. The mentors of the past, the stories and myths from so many religions did carry my curiosity for decades more—but puberty was absolutely wild. In retrospect, it was clearly caused by the toxic chemicals in the food and beverages disrupting my endocrines, as it did for many of the kids around me.

I did eventually recover, after soul searching through music and all the religious text from every religion and society in the last 12,000 years. My Chi balanced out, and I felt very peaceful with the world. As a high schooler, I felt sure that my family couldn’t afford to send me to college, so I began preparing to join the military after bulking up in football—shooting up to over 6 feet in height.

Military Service and Transition to Civilian Life

Technology became a crutch for me, so much so that I lost my military job because I couldn’t do math without a calculator. As a Loadmaster for a C-130, my job would have been to calculate the weight distribution of the cargo so that even a C-5 could take off and land without exploding.

Very important job, and it must be done correctly, even if the calculators are broken. Very thankful for the experience, and all the training during the Bush Jr. years—and my first job out of high school had me travel on a plane for the first time! My mother and father came out to Texas for my graduation from boot camp (first time being on a plane for either of them too!).

I got to enjoy and grow, from the San Antonio summer to the frigid mountain peaks of Washington State, to the dry desert plains of Altus, Oklahoma. After all that AWESOME training, and then failing my math tests, I went on to test the waters of civilian employment.

To be continued.