I could feel the blood pressure in my veins; it dropped a notch after the dinging sound. The fasten seat belt sign went off, and the plane was now cruising at thirty-five thousand feet toward my new life.

I could barely wait to get there and meet the people already on the inside, the ones who’d made it. I was on my way to a new life in the rapidly growing tech industry, which was shaping the world after its own agenda. By working at the most powerful tech company in the world, SHOW, I w. . .

I could feel the blood pressure in my veins; it dropped a notch after the dinging sound. The fasten seat belt sign went off, and the plane was now cruising at thirty-five thousand feet toward my new life.

I could barely wait to get there and meet the people already on the inside, the ones who’d made it. I was on my way to a new life in the rapidly growing tech industry, which was shaping the world after its own agenda. By working at the most powerful tech company in the world, SHOW, I w. . .

It was the end of a relatively uneventful 2009 and the new year was just weeks away. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just where I was in my life at that time. I had graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington the previous year and spent that whole summer attempting to surf and going out with friends. Early that fall, just a few months later, I finally got a job waiting tables at a ritzy, upscale joint near Wrightsville Beach. We only opened in . . .