So GenCon was a positive experience in a couple of different ways.
1. Surrounding myself with hobbyists and, in general, people who are entirely and unabashedly unashamed of what they love and what they do.
2. Getting to meet up with Neal and his actually wildly successful and interesting group of board gamer/MTG/anime loving friends. Talking with them, drinking with them, etc. They have interests ranging from singing to stage plays to video production.
3. Flexing my social skills with people from square zero that I’ve never met before.
Because point the first, I don’t consider myself as having as many hobbies as I ever used to. I kind of feel like I sold out in school. I gave up who I was partially in order to attain this degree and this career and this life. I used to really like computers. Now I’m super behind on my tech news. I used to make movies and photoshop. Now I have nothing to shoot and no people to shoot it with. I used to blog! (Well, now I tweet more. Not as much as I like, but moreso than I blog.)
And I have only myself to blame. But just as a thought exercise (and an excuse to blog more), let me recount the ways. I work long shifts 4 days a week (24 hrs between Tues/Thurs & 17 hours on Sat/Sun every other weekend) and so I get about 3 days a week to myself, not always contiguous. As a 12 hour day stretches very easily into 13 hours and 14 after driving. I don’t do anything in the evenings of my workdays because it’s bedtime before I even get in the door. So I occupy myself with reddit and fall asleep somewhere around page 12-13 as chatting or tech articles are too involved for my sleepy self to wind down with. Then on my day off, I cook (the particulars of which I should update y’all on in another post), I clean (ineffectually), I might grocery shop or run other errands.
Point the second, I took for granted that Purdue life meant that I was always surrounded by highly educated driven individuals. Now that that common trait is not longer present, it becomes a little more difficult to relate to people. It used to be you asked about major first off. Now, people I meet aren’t always college educated and I don’t relish reminding them of that. They may not mind, but just in case they do…
So Neal’s friends, who include a biochemist, sysadmin, iOS app developer, who are also vocalist, amateur play actor, Let’s Play-er, cosplayer. And I’m interested in doing some of those things! So I got a chance to pick some brains over the weekend there. Will try to develop those hobbies along in the ensuring months…
I have come a long way from freshman year of college. Hell, I spent my high school years as a mathlete. Then when I went to Purdue and lost my identity, I became even more awkward. Freshman year was bad. Not having friends in my major was bad. Depression was bad. That didn’t turn around until “Ohio†really. There, in a small tight-knit group I was given some much-needed validation and self-confidence. And the latter may have been the key needed to turn the lock. Maybe it was me emulating the universally positive behavior I saw there, but I observed the skills and mannerisms I would need to put on a passable presentation as an extrovert. And if you act it long enough, even you’ll begin to believe it. I wouldn’t consider myself an extrovert. But I can pass now. At least to new people.
I think I’ll cut it off here because this means you get to read it now instead of me just letting this document languish on my desktop. I used to firmly believe that each blog post should be self-contained and have defined middles and conclusions. And I would let blog posts percolate and simmer until they were edited/worked upon or I just threw in the towel and gave up because the topic/event was rapidly aging out of relevance. But could any of you even tell the difference? Better to be producing something even if I can’t kick out top tier blog posts every single go.
Thus…. [Publish]
I hope I’m not included with these “highly educated driven individuals”