About Me

I spent way, way too long wrestling with coming up with an About Me blurb. This is mostly due to my overthinking, alongside a newfound staunchness about oversharing about myself online. I've probably course-corrected a bit too far in that regard but *gestures broadly* this is kind of a historical moment where being too known feels scary and threatening.

On top of that, I have also been in a bit of a quarter-life crisis about what defines me. I have spent the last two years or so being deeply self-critical about my habit of framing my identity around my day-job. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a lot about what I do and get a lot of personal value out of it, but man, I don't want that to be all I am to myself or to new people. Being the kind of person whose sole attention is on a job sounds dreadfully boring, and I'm more than that, dangit!

So, instead, I'll share a bit about who I try to be to the people I care about. The kind of stuff I want people to be able to say about me at the end of my life, hopefully without needing to stretch the truth.

A lot of people in my life feel like I am a safe person. I have been told that I have a very disarming earnestness about me. I am so unapologetically "me" regardless of who I am around, and I do my best to give space to the people I care about for them to be "them" too. Some people have queer friends or family who don't come out to them because they're scared of what will happen; I, on the other hand, have had more than one instance where someone in my life feels they don't need to make a showing of it, just asking "you know how I'm xyz, right?" Often times, I don't actually pick up on it, but it's always fun to run into that!

I wear my feelings and my interests on my sleeve. I can (and will) yap at length about many things. Cars, planes, history, slice-of-life anime, world music, Ugandan action movies, among others. I also take great joy in finding out what niche interests have burrowed into other peoples' minds. If a conversation veers into odd hyperfixations, I am 100% locked in.

I am a dedicated mentor. This chapter of my life has put me in a position where I get to direct a handful of young adults taking their first baby steps into professional life. I was a disaster in motion at their age and desperately needed mentors who would listen and walk through the chaos of life with me. Now, I get to pay those efforts forward and uplift two or three or four kiddos at a time. Sometimes it's career-related, sometimes it's just navigating friendships, institutions, and personal crossroads. If any single thing is propelling me forward in my day-to-day life, it's the joy of being present for my ducklings during the brief time I get with them.

I am very, very sentimental. That sentimentality doesn't always show itself as an attachment to gifts or photos or knickknacks or whatever, but it's present in basically every relationship I have. The way my mom put it, basically everything I love, I love because it's attached to a person I love. Be it my great-grandma's candy bowl, my grandma's potato soup, my mom's sweet iced tea, crusing around with my dad in his old Mustang, the stocking cap a dear friend made me, or the blanket draped over my couch that reminds me of the one my mom held me in when I was little, all the little things I love most are inseparable from the memory and presence of people I love.

I'm also far from a finished product. I can be more than a little neurotic, prone to anxiety and worry. I am sometimes inattentive, not picking up when I am needed. I am also prone to suffering alone, putting up defensive walls when what I need most is support and care. I often fail to show my appreciation or fondness for the people in my life, no matter how strongly I may feel it. Goodness knows I probably have plenty of other foibles that I'm totally unaware of too. But, hopefully, I am getting better with some of these things.

If there's one thing I am getting better at, it's being more kind to myself. I've been fortunate to have a lot of people show me kindness over the years, and I have progressively started to model the way they showed I should be treated, towards treating myself. I deserve patience and understanding, care and attention. It took me a long time to see myself as worthy of that, and thankfully, I am getting out of my own way, being more present in the lives of those around me, and not assuming the worst!

Hopefully this helps whoever's reading it get a general impression of what I'm like, what really matters to me, and the "me" that I want to cultivate.

At some point, I may add some more fun interests, a goofy RPG stat section with made-up abilities, and some other stuff to this, if only to balance out the "I feel weird talking about myself but here goes nothing" of everything above.