I started plunking out twinkle twinkle and star wars on the organ when I was 4 or 5 or something. I started saxophone lessons in 4th grade, piano in 5th grade. I 'wrote' one piece as an exercise while taking piano. My teacher gave me a chord progression and I came up with a few patterns that sounded an awful lot like the overworld music in Final Fantasy IV. I stopped piano after 9th grade and did drama and choir instead. I sang in a Vocal Jazz ensemble, and played sax in the Jazz band, and had lots of opportunity to improvise.

In college my introductory computer science classes were really boring and easy, while the introductory music classes were challenging and interesting. Sophomore year I declared a double major in Music Theory. I took composition lessons for 1 or 2 semesters, I can't remember exactly, but I didn't get much out of them. Two of the "Three Short Pieces for Piano" were written in lessons. Writing for class was really hard, because I felt like I had to please the professor, though he tried to tell me to write whatever I wanted. I agonized over every detail, which got discouraging, because usually there was no correct answer. I also had huge confidence problems because of the rigid, mathematical way I thought music should be appreciated. That is, I thought there was no way I could ever come up with anything original, and I thought original==good.

One day a few years ago, after listening to dozens of Mozart pieces dozens of times, hearing how amazing it was, and knowing how many people poo pooh'd Mozart for using predictable harmonic progressions; I said 'screw it, I'm writing a classical sonata and don't care how unoriginal it turns out to be.' I did it because that's what I liked and that's what I wanted to write. I've had a lot of fun since then, though I haven't made any money.