Month: January 2012

I put this on Tumblr earlier today. It deserves to be here, too, I think:

Two things jump out at me in this picture:

1. Holy shit those shoes are huge.

2. I don’t look nervous or uncomfortable; I look genuinely happy. That, combined with my haircut, makes me think that this must have been taken when I was 14, perhaps in the Spring just before I turned 15. This is probably right when Star Trek was starting.

When I look at these cheesy teen magazine pictures of myself— wait. That sounds creepy and weird and awful. Let me try again: When I gaze lovingly at these old pictures, I remember how sad and unhappy and uncomfortable I was for most of my teens, and how much I hated all the posing for pictures and attention from magazines. I was shy, I was uncomfortable in my own skin, I was nerdy and anxious and weak and weird, and being put under the Teen Media spotlight just made me want to crawl into a hole and die.

But this picture reminds me that it wasn’t always overwhelming and weird, and I’m glad to be reminded of that, because it’s way too easy to focus on the awkward and uncomfortable times I really wanted to be alone playing Blades of Steel on my NES, but I was at some teen cheese thing, trying to fit in.

In a lot of the teen magazine pictures, my smile never reaches my eyes, so I'm grateful for those rare occasions when it did.

(Thanks to Chambers1986 on Tumblr, who originally posted this picture.)

There's a moment every day when I think, "I should have written about that in my blog," but then I realize that instead of planting the seeds that would grow into a story, I put them in boxes on a shelf called Twitter, or Tumblr, or Google Plus.

They're nice seeds and all, and they look great in their individual boxes, preserved for years to come, but they never get a chance to grow into something more than just seeds. That's sort of sad, I think, and I always promise myself that I'm going to come back here and write something every single day, and give myself one assignment and deadline a week… but I'm just not disciplined enough to do that right now, and I haven't been for close to a year.

It's not that I don't love telling stories, but I sort of feel like a band that's been on tour so long — and having so much fun doing it — they haven't gone into the studio to cut an album in so long, they've forgotten how to do it.

Last year (also known as two weeks ago) I participated in the Reddit Gifts Secret Santa exchange. My giftee is a Batman fan, so I gave him a copy of Gotham Central, autographed by my friend Ed brubaker, who wrote it. I also gave him a copy of DC Universe Online, because it's really fun to pretend you're a superhero (or villain) and when you go to Gotham City in the game, you can play with me (I'm the voice of Robin in the game.)

My Secret Santa hit it out of the park, and shipped me a box of awesome. Yesterday, I finally put pictures of my gifts into the gallery.

My Secret Santa looked deep into my soul, and gave me four + Q gifts that nailed the four points of my inner compass. There was also a Snickers bar in there, in case I needed a nougat boost during the opening of gifts. They were all awesome, but it was the one non-gift in the box that was the best gift of all. 

My gifts were all individually wrapped and labeled so that I would open them in the proper order. Go ahead and flip through the gallery to enjoy them the way I did. 

Head on over to RedditGifts to see what I got, and Happy New Year!