An introduction is in order

My name is Jack Zale. I reside in Chicago, IL, United States, and work as a Software Developer as well as a yoga instructor. I also enjoy writing - as this site is intended to demonstrate.

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To quote David Byrne, I sometimes ask myself "well, how did I get here??". I am originally from Corvallis, Oregon (a small college town in the western US state of Oregon). Corvallis is located about 80 miles away from the city of Portland.

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I spent the first twenty years of my life in Corvallis, finally transferring to Eugene, Oregon for college. I attended Lane Community College and then transferred with an associates degree University of Oregon, where I received a bachelor's in Computer and Information Science.

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I moved to Portland after graduating from UofO. I relocated as a result of being hired as a co developer of an app for a neonatal startup that could not pay its staff and ultimately failed. 

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By the time I left the startup, two years had passed since I had graduated college, and I was unable to find work. This is when I discovered a program around the Washington DC area. It was a coding boot camp of sorts that would pay its students to attend. The catch was that they required a two year commitment.

 

The boot camp would pay for tuition, room and board and in exchange put the student under a two year contract with them. They would then sell the student's contact to a hiring company at the end of the program.

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Anyway, after the program, I was hired into a company in Chicago, so that's how I got where I am now. My contract with this company - which I choose to leave ambiguous at this time - lasted for one year and nine months (since the first three months were spent in the program. Fascinating, eh?). I stayed at the company for nearly seven years in total, and just recently left because they required that I relocate to another state and me with a mortgage.

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And now for the part where I talk about how I became a yoga instructor...

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I first discovered yoga at age 16. I was on the high school wrestling team, and wanted to find an activity that emphasized strength, endurance and flexibility. My mom, who had been practicing a form of hot yoga called Bikram Yoga (so named after its founder) for a matter of years and suggested that I come with her to a class.

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Being a teenage male who lifted weights and put on a macho facade, I had my reservations about the prospect of practicing yoga. At the time, the thought of yoga brought up an image of half-naked hippy woman and weird, perhaps depraved, also half-naked men lighting incense and chanting while putting their legs behind their heads. This image seemed to directly oppose the picture of toughness and masculinity my frail young mind tried for.

 

I also had a different sort of reservation. I was afraid that it would kick my ass. My mom had emphatically repeated how many times I cannot recall of how hot and grueling of a practice it is. She explained that top athletes who practice this style of yoga have described it as the most intense workout they have ever experienced. Explaining that it was done in basically a sauna didn't help put my mind at ease either.

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I took the class, and have been practicing regularly ever since.