Have you made enough effort for the job and career you want in the future? I'm going to tell you a true story about a coal miner named Mircea Goia who switched careers to pursue what he really wanted to do.

I come from an Eastern European country. I worked in a coal mine for many years (in a very deep mine). Every day I was in danger, and that's how I spent those years. Later I felt I had had enough of that life and decided to look for a different kind of life (coal mining had no future). I was young, with no burdens, just like you.

When I left the coal mine, the government gave us a sum of money (about $2,500 — which at that time in our country was equivalent to a miner's yearly salary). I used that money to start learning about computers. At that time I actually didn't understand anything. I had only seen some pictures and read some introductions. I bought an old 486 computer (which cost a quarter of the money) and a printer (another quarter). I signed up for a university computer training course (studied for a few months), but most of it was self-taught. This went on for about two years, learning how to use a computer, how to install programs, how to fix them, and how to use some software (Word, image processing software, etc.).

A year later I got internet at home. Of course, it was dial-up. From then on, most of my money went to internet and phone bills (at that time in our country these fees were especially high). Many times I had to give up eating meat and eat only one meal a day (mostly potatoes, because that was the cheapest food I could find), so I could save enough money to cover that expense. I haven't told you yet that I also had my retired mother and younger siblings to take care of (I was the oldest).

For two years I didn't buy any new clothes or shoes, didn't eat out, didn't go out for entertainment, and didn't have a girlfriend (that's obvious).

That way, I could get online (oh, that magical Yahoo, Hotbot, Webcrawler, Altavista). I started learning how to develop web pages. I learned HTML, some CSS, some Adobe Photoshop, and some Microsoft technologies (classic ASP and Access/SQL server). I spent 6 months building my first tiny website (a static site without a database). It was very difficult at the time because there was very little information about it, and not many people here knew much about it (especially in my town in our country), and my English was only average.

A year later, I posted my "resume" online on a talent pool in our country (it's hard to call it a resume) (my savings were running out).

At that point, a German company found me and got in touch. At the time I was working in a tobacco factory to earn a living (I didn't like smoking). Two months later, the German company asked me to go to another city for an interview... There were 6 people in total, and I was the only one without a university degree... But I got the job (obviously, I knew more than they did; I thought I had no chance at all).

The salary they gave me seemed very high at the time, so I quit my job at the tobacco factory (that factory soon went out of business).

After two years of frugal study, I finally became a web developer, developing an e-commerce website remotely for that company from home. I knew nothing about e-commerce and database-driven websites; I needed to learn more. I studied these things day and night... It took a year for the first version of the website to be completed... Then I went to Germany and spent another 3 months on the site there.

I started working on this website in the fall of 2002. For two years I only worked on this website, and I also did online promotion for it. Through my efforts, I increased the e-commerce website's sales tenfold (from a few hundred euros per month to tens of thousands of euros).

I have no nostalgia for the coal mine work. Although many of my former miner friends regretted leaving the mine, I don't.

Five years later I came to the United States, and I've been here ever since. I still do the same web development work, and I really want to start a company (I've already begun working on it).

Six years ago I became fascinated by something else: film and video production. So, I started learning new things again. Who knows, maybe I really will change careers again...

You can!

Don't worry, if you can save a little, you can save up enough money to become proficient in programming skills, and later you can make a living from it.

You must persist (sometimes you will encounter setbacks), you need to endure poverty (don't spend money on unnecessary things — including eating and drinking out), you need to learn how to teach yourself, find answers to problems through your own methods (Google is your good helper), and you need an analytical spirit (when there are multiple paths in front of you, you need to analyze to find the right direction).

Today, compared to 11 years ago, you have more information... You have more cheap or free tools to help you, and you have various community forums to guide you. Believe me, you are in a better position with more opportunities.