At some point, he thought he wanted to become a visual effects guy. Hollywood dreams and green screens. So he went to school for it. But the deeper he got, the clearer it became: he wasn’t wired for explosions and CGI dragons. He gravitated to the real—the raw interviews, the stories hiding in plain sight. He still learned the grind: 16-hour edit days, caffeine-fueled deadlines, the art of killing your darlings. It wasn’t glamorous, but it taught him discipline. And more importantly, it taught him what not to chase.