About me:

It's been a hot minute since I actually wrote an "about me". Let me see what I can do.

in short:

I'm a person in my mid-thirties living in a central Texas city with tens of thousands of other people. I'm a furry and have been for the past 20 years; it means a lot to me, even if I don't always know what it means. I'm trying to figure out what I want to learn to understand others better, and what I can do to help out.

major influences:

Reading Animorphs, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Catch-22 at an early age predisposed me to reject war; reckoning with what America has done after 9/11 pretty firmly anchored me against war.

Growing up poor, and seeing firsthand how anti-labor and anti-human capitalist practices can be, predisposed me to reject capitalism; reading works like Marx's Wage Labor and Capital and Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism helped solidify my understanding of capitalism's inherent flaws. More important than those texts, however, has been the personal insight and experiences shared by others off and online, and I owe many friends a great deal for sharing their realities of being a person within such a system.

I think Natalie Reed was probably my formal introduction to challenging gender, and bell hooks' work to race, but many many others have been essential to helping me better understand (I hope!) the effects and harms of racial and gendered discrimination.

I owe my sense of justice to my mother; I also greatly admire her faith even if I do not necessarily share it. Developing a better understanding of what her faith meant to her pulled me away from a bitter anti-theism. And I think I would be a much less curious person without the work of many teachers and professors I have known who have encouraged me to keep my mind sharp despite my (humility || self-deprecation).

As regards media... most of what I watch these days are streamers and 'tubers. I credit people like DNOpls and RetroPals for helping me find and appreciate older or weirder games, and people like Jerma and RTVS' Scorpy for seeing what sorts of weird-ass fascinating shit people can do with a livestream.

I'm sure there's more and others, but that's what I've got for now.

my interests:

Many and varied. I have some professional experience baking, learning, manufacturing, and teaching. I have amateur experience with mathematics, computer science, geography, GIS, gamedev, cooking, and several sports.

These days what I mostly like to do is read non-fiction and think about what video games lack or what they depict well. Plus I've been trying to explore the subcultures of games more -- learning Tekken and learning about the FGC has been very rewarding. But I also keep abreast of pro and amateur sports, I watch streams and occasionally films, and while I don't create much myself I am trying to sharpen my skills for when I do understand what I want to create, explore, or share.

my goals:

I'd like to help others. I'd like to create things. I'd like to teach again, maybe, if I feel confident doing so.

I would like to feel healthy again. I would like to continue to develop healthy emotional and mental skills. I would like to understand my local community better and engage with it again. I would like to understand my relationship with religion and what my beliefs are and are not in that respect. I would like to hang out with others more.

in short (reprise):

I got no fuckin' idea. Let's figure it out.