Does Your History Matter?

I Celebrate & Recall How One’s Personal Past Can Teach More Than ‘The Past’

Jun 25, 2025

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Photo from the back cover of my CD packaging. Yep, that’s me in 2006.

I told people on the most recent Sunday Buffet that all holidays are “made up holidays” and that you don’t need anyone’s permission — especially not government permission — to celebrate what you want to celebrate.

I’m going to take my own anarchist/voluntarist advice for this week’s article.

June 25 is a special day for me, because two big achievements happened on this date, 15 years apart. One has to do with music, and the other has to do with software. They involved lessons and growth that I brought with me to other ventures, and that I pray will continue the rest of my life.

And in telling you tales from my personal history, I hope to encourage you to reflect on the richness and value of your own past.

So much is made of learning from the all-encompassing “history” of the world and its inhabitants, but I think there’s at least as much worth remembering about the personal history of one inhabitant: yourself!

So, let’s begin with my story of June 25, 2006.

Remember CDs?

When digital recording became less costly in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was a big deal for indie musicians (like me!) to record their songs and either burn or press their own CDs.

I had demo-quality recordings that I would tote around to gigs, but decided I wanted something better that I’d feel comfortable sending to indie radio programs. The finished product, called Along the Way, was in my hands in the late spring of 2006.

I asked the owner of a local cafe if I could have a CD release party there on a Sunday evening, and went about making arrangements for June 25, 2006, at Crescent Moon.

It was a tangible marker of taking my music more seriously and gave me something that eventually earned me radio airplay and interviews, and with those promotional vehicles, more gigs!

But the journey had almost ended as soon as it began a few years earlier.

Artwork for the inside tray of the CD packaging.

My first time getting on stage by myself was at an open mic at a built-for-music bar across the river in Philadelphia. I wrote my name on the list — only “Dom” since I didn’t want to burden the possibly inebriated host with having to read and pronounce “Scarcella” in a poorly lit, smoky room — and played when it was my turn.

As soon as I got on stage, I learned something about myself: I have stage fright! What a time to discover this, eh?!

I managed to get through my two songs, knees shaking the whole time. It was so bad, I promised myself I would return the next week and do it again, because I didn’t want that initial feeling of near-crippling fear to be my only memory of trying music.

And then I went back a third time, and on and on, and to other venues, too.

Eventually, my stage fright subsided. I left my newspaper job — it was a dying industry, anyway — and devoted more time and energy to music. My level of comfort on stage had grown to where I hosted open mics and featured shows for other musicians.

By 2006, I had quite unintentionally developed skills that I still have today:

marketing/promotions,
event hosting,
greater cognitive empathy and attention,
and more confidence to stand as a lone individual and communicate to crowds of people (which translated to volunteering more at my parish, especially in the religious education program; yep, I started teaching!).

Oh, and I got better at music and writing and being my own audio engineer (“sound guy,” as we called it), and met all sorts of people, some of whom became longtime friends.

A new kind of school

Those new skills and connections led me to freelance work in broadcast engineering and operations in 2014. Over the next six years, I earned a couple of promotions to full-time work and was even teaching my colleagues how to use our latest digital platforms.

An ownership change late in the first year of the #COVIDHoax meant the elimination of my job. But my experience there gave me a taste of the technical side of digital media and a desire to upgrade my skills even more.

For me, “learn to code” was an opportunity, not an insult!

My headshot for my first software job in 2021.

Not wanting to enroll at a traditional college for courses, I found a six-month bootcamp that held all courses online and taught students how to succeed in remote and hybrid settings.

I excelled at the math and logic tasks, and at the human side of remote work (thanks, music, for the confidence to engage with others!). I struggled with the visual-creation and language-heavy aspects. All told, I did enough to graduate on Friday, June 25, 2021.

It was an achievement that demanded another beginning, like my big day exactly 15 years earlier.

A bootcamp-aided job search followed, and I landed a short-lived but valuable entry-level Software Development Engineer role.

As with music, my time in software bootcamp taught me much that I added to my toolkit, including a sharper, deeper awareness of my weaknesses. And my ongoing curiosity about modern media prompted me to explore on-demand publishing platforms, which spurred me to write a book (that I tell you about every week on Substack, heh).

The present and future (and Comments)

On this June 25, I find myself nearly 150 posts into a publishing venture on Substack that includes writing, podcasting and teaching.

Yes, I’m still looking for more work, but I’m doing so as the most well-rounded, good-neighborly version of me that I’ve ever been. And I’ve honed my process to where I could keep doing Substack even with a new full-time gig to pay the big bills.

I’ve learned from history, and especially from my personal history.

What have you learned from your past, that’s worth celebrating?

Let me know your thoughts in the Comments section below …

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