Zechariah is the founder and contributor of Contingency Media.
As I was a child, I wondered less about what I wanted to do, and more so dreamed about everything I possibly could do.
As we were learning about pacific island nations early in my education, I thought about how great it would be if I could collect enough balloons to fly to far away destinations. Mind you, this was before the movie Up, which only helped to reinforce that I wasn’t alone in my aspirations at the time.
It’s no wonder that the Disney Pixar movie ended up giving me such a sense of nostalgia. It captured some essence of that wonder to do the impossible. My dreams weren’t always so far fetched, but they were often quite grand.
I wanted to become an inventor and create something that would solve a big problem and be used all around the world. I wanted to become President of the United States and have an impact on the fabric of everyday society. I wanted to become an author and employ the power of the written word. I wanted to be a world traveler who used business ventures to fund charitable efforts. I wanted to learn at least one major language from every continent to better connect with others in their personal, cultural context.
After much dreaming, I set out to achieve these goals. With extensive practice, from writing movie, film, and music reviews on WordPress, creating short stories and novels, and producing marketing copy, I reached a point of mastery to where I could tell whatever stories I dreamed up.
I even loved reading and writing essays. It’s something I didn’t share in common with many classmates in college!
I had focused for so long on becoming an author, it took some time before I realized what I wanted to do next. In the meantime, however, I hadn’t stopped dreaming. Before becoming an author, I achieved many micro-dreams that I didn’t realize I had.
As I built up experience in the publishing and creative media industries, I began work consulting for and producing marketing content for other content creators like myself.
As a pre-teen, I was very involved with online communities. One particularly formative experience was when I became part of a LEGO fan community. It was an incredible collaboration center for young builders. But I soon saw it disbanded. The adult who maintained it could no longer do so. There was some advance notice, so I started to plan. I started to learn. I sought out what I believed were the best web hosts for communities, and I began to learn web design, administration, and all that’s entailed.
I gathered a team of kids who were mostly older than me, in their mid-teens, and set about creating communities. I would create fan forums for discussion, curated arcades, educational hubs, and creative outlets for video production and graphic design. I’ve continued to work on communities and websites to this day, and it’s led to other opportunities.
For instance, I built out a campaign website for a family member seeking political office, facilitated a rebrand and recreated a company website for another family member with a longstanding services business, and I helped a non-profit build out their web presence with social media and streaming of their events.
During my early web design years, I also learned as much as I could about graphics design, game design, film production, and music production. After all, it was important to me that I create dynamic content that would engage my first time website visitors and loyal community members.
I delved into education as well, wanting to help convey everything that I learned to the betterment of those around me. I sought opportunities to mentor and teach, and found more sophisticated opportunities as I grew older. What began as educational web pages grew into volunteer public speaking events and community seminars on writing, marketing, publishing, and cyber security.
There was a teacher who inspired me in 2004, when I was in middle school. He had traveled the world, as was my dream, and taught us about global currencies and had us run competitive stock market simulations. This inspired an early interest in business and economics and what they could unlock. I would watch my favorite companies, like Nintendo, on the markets while growing up. And finally, after attending college for International Business, I took a dive in with my own portfolio and began actively managing a portfolio and conducting market research.
My professional life has followed suit with my individual pursuits. I began with opportunities in the service industry, just looking for a start, and soon began exploring my passions in technology sales, technical troubleshooting, marketing, management, education, and instructional design.
I never could stop writing. Whether it’s been technical guides, tutorials, blogs, reviews, scripts, or copy, I’m increasingly passionate about the written word and all the potential it has to reshape perspectives.
Contingency Media is my conglomerate of dreams. It has a focus on the pursuit of creative media that enrich, and training programs that further democratize knowledge.
The showcase pages tell a bit of my story, showing some selection of early works and how they develop over time. Many projects, however, I cannot share due to proprietary information and confidentiality agreements.
Thanks for taking the time to explore! If you have any questions or would otherwise like to learn more, feel free to visit my social channels and use the email form below.
Zechariah
Founder of Contingency Media