I didn’t plan to learn AI. Life kind of forced me into it.
I’m a bodybuilder. I train athletes. I’ve spent years in the gym learning discipline, structure, and how to push through pain. That’s my world. Code, terminals, Python environments — that was someone else’s world.
Then I got injured.
Not a little tweak. A major injury that took me out of my sport completely. I went from training six days a week to sitting in a house with nothing to do but heal. And if you know anything about athletes, you know that “do nothing” is the hardest thing in the world.
The crypto rabbit hole
Before the injury, I’d already been poking around AI — just not the way most people think. I was in the crypto space in 2021-2022, and that’s where I first saw generative AI in action. Trading bots, image generators, automated systems — crypto was full of people building weird things with early AI tools.
I wasn’t building anything myself. I was just watching. But it planted a seed.
Then ChatGPT came out. And before most people had even heard of it, I was already on Discord generating images with Midjourney. Back then, Midjourney didn’t have a web app — it was all through Discord servers. I set up my own private Discord channel so I didn’t have to use the chaotic public one. That was probably the first “technical” thing I did, and I didn’t even realize it was technical.
When everything changed
After the injury, I was stuck at home with time and curiosity. That’s a dangerous combination.
I started looking into local AI models. Not cloud-based ChatGPT — actual models running on your own computer. I found Ollama, and something clicked. The idea that I could run AI on my own machine, without paying a subscription, without giving my data to anyone — that felt like freedom.
So I tried to install it.
And that’s when reality hit.
The part nobody talks about
I had never opened a terminal before. Not once. I didn’t know what a command line was. I didn’t know what Python was. I didn’t know what an environment was. I was starting from literally zero.
The first few weeks were brutal. Not because the concepts were hard — because everything was fighting me.
Mac wanted me to download developer tools I didn’t need. Python environments would randomly break and I’d have to rebuild from scratch. I didn’t understand the difference between a global environment and a local one — so I’d install everything globally, then something would wipe it all out, and I’d have no idea what happened or how to get it back.
One time I tried to disconnect from iCloud and Mac deleted my entire desktop. Everything. Gone. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you’re learning by doing and nobody tells you the rules.
I had code snippets everywhere. Different versions of everything. V1, V2, V50,000. I couldn’t see the forest from the trees. I’d try one approach, it wouldn’t work, try another, copy-paste something from an AI, change one line, break everything, start over. It was chaos.
And the AI agents back then? They were helpful, but limited. There was no Cursor. GitHub Copilot was new and not great. You’d ask an AI for help and get code that almost worked — but “almost” means nothing when you don’t know how to fix the one line that’s wrong. I tried every model I could find. Some were good at one thing, terrible at another. I learned to recognize weaknesses fast.
I remember one night staying up until 4 AM because my Python environment got deleted. Again. I didn’t even know what an environment was — I just knew that everything I’d built was gone and I had to start over. That happened multiple times.
Even getting API credits was a nightmare. As someone who’d never developed anything, the whole process of signing up for developer accounts, getting approved, navigating documentation written for people who already knew what they were doing — it felt like the industry was designed to keep people like me out.
What got me through it
Discipline.
That’s it. The same thing that got me through years of training. The same thing that made me show up to the gym on days I didn’t want to. That’s what made me sit at my computer at midnight trying to figure out why my code wasn’t working.
It wasn’t talent. It wasn’t some natural gift for technology. It was stubbornness and reps. Just like the gym.
What I built
From that first Ollama install, things started to snowball.
I built a YouTube automation system that used AI to generate topics and analyze comments. Then I built the Infinity Engine — a mathematical tool suite based on SHA-256 hashing. Then the Constellation Compiler, the Resonance Engine, the Password Engine. Then a browser privacy extension. Then a fitness SaaS platform.
None of this was planned. Each thing led to the next. I’d learn one concept, which unlocked another, which opened a door I didn’t know existed.
What I want you to know
You don’t need a CS degree. You don’t need to be “good at computers.” You don’t need to understand math or algorithms or any of the scary-sounding stuff.
You need curiosity. You need stubbornness. And you need to be okay with feeling stupid for a while — because that’s what learning feels like.
The industry isn’t designed for people like us. Documentation is written for people who already know what they’re doing. API approval processes assume you have a developer background. Tutorial videos skip the part where you’re stuck because they assume you already know what a terminal is. It can feel like the whole system is designed to keep beginners out.
But the tools themselves? They’re for everyone. That’s the disconnect.
I was a bodybuilder who didn’t know what a terminal was. Now I build AI tools. The distance between those two things is shorter than you think.
If you’re reading this and you feel like you’re behind — you’re not. You’re just at the beginning. And the beginning is where all the interesting stuff happens.
Next up: “What is AI actually? (No jargon, I promise)”