Where I'm from ...

My name is Sean K. Johnson.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan and moved to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan when I was ONE year old.

My mother was a school teacher in Detroit during all of my childhood. She became an administrator in Pontiac, MI in elementary schools when I left for college. She stayed there during my college years and retired a few years ago.

I went to all Bloomfield Hills public schools. I graduated in 1990 and went to college at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. I majored in Computer Science and graduated 21/494 students, with a B.S. Computer Science, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

I graduated from Morehouse College in 1994 and applied for and accepted a position to teach English in Futtsu City, Japan for two years from 1994-1996 at 5 different junior high schools. Japan reshaped my life ... more to follow on that.

After Japan, I returned to attend the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor and graduated with my J.D. in 1999. I immediately left the country and moved to London, England. I started my first company there, Third Eye Technology, Ltd.

I left London in 2000 and moved to Oakland, California to work for a statup company in downtown San Francisco. I lost that job and moved back to Michigan right in the middle of the crash of Silicon Valley in the summer of 2000.

Back home, I took a job for a little while with a startup company, Nuspire, in Commerce, Michigan. I worked there for 6 months before I realized that I couldn't "work" for someone else any longer. I restarted Third Eye Technology and began to do website design, database design and development for large auto insurance companies in 2001.

I did that for several years until I decided to take the profits from that business and invest in an internet cafe, Timbuktu Cafe, located in Great Lakes Crossing Mall in Auburn Hills, Michigan in June 2008. I am the president of Timbuktu Cafe and have been gradually building up the education arm of this business.

In a tiny nutshell, that's a brief synopsis of my life.

I've done almost everything academically right and everything socially wrong throughout my life, but what distinguishes me is my ability to reflect and learn from my mistakes.

I started this blog to share some of my thoughts and experiences to hopefully spread some wisdom to those who may not know me and would like to know more.

Sean K. Johnson