posted: 2025-04-30
On Enthusiasm, Sharing Interests, and Being Yourself
It’s 1:23 AM and a light snow is falling. I’ve had five drinks of tequila drank three different ways. And now I’m sitting on a chair that is too fancy for the sidewalk as I wait for my tacos I ordered.
“But how do you know that you’re not going to make someone upset?”
I turn my head toward the question.
“I just understand that I’m being as considerate as I can when I decide I need to stand up for myself.”
She’s a few years younger than me, maybe three or four years if I had to guess. She’s a master’s student at a University far away from mine. She’s also burning off two different tequila drinks. She’s got these dark yet glossy eyes that are three sentences away from dripping tears down her cheeks.
“And do you-” she sighs, “How do you just not worry about what other people will think?”
I don’t know how to answer this question without staring up at the night sky. It is the first question all weekend I do not have an immediate answer to.
This conversation started in the bar at the hotel lobby- it was one of many. I was a particularly popular person the entire weekend. People would approach me with drinks in hand, sometimes I had one of my own, and we’d get to talking. We’d talk about the conference we were at. We talked about the weather, and how unseasonably cold it was for Albuquerque this time of year. We talked about my role as Student Sections Committee Chair and what I did. We talked about what their goals were. We talked about anything.
This is where our conversation started: talking about work. In my role as committee chair, I was having a conversation with her about societal involvement. She was to be the next conference chair. She had questions. I had answers.
“So, what did the UNM folks ask you to do? Or like- what were you supposed to do at the conference?”
“I’m their gofer. I fill in the gaps where they need help. The only times I can’t are when I’m doing the SSC Meeting and during socials.”
“And they asked you to go to Trinity?”
“Well, I was already on the tour.”
“They trusted you to be chaperone.”
“Yes. And if there’s anything that they include in their post-conference report for you to review, it’s that they should have had UNM volunteers on every tour. Do not do what they did.”
She nodded. “I heard about what happened at Trinity from Kira.” She turned to glance over at the other conference chair, talking at a different table in the hotel bar.
“Not that you’ll have to deal with anything like that at your tour, but it’s proof of why we ask for so many different contingency plans.”
“That makes a lot of sense.”
We both nodded, looking for a way to move past the current conversation topic. School was the obvious next step.
I asked her what she did when was wasn’t doing “all this”. She said “study”, and so I asked “and how do you like to study?”.
“Well, I like listening to soundtracks when I study.”
“Like from movies? Games?”
“I listen to some video game soundtracks, yeah.”
“Oh cool, which ones?”
“When I’m studying? It’s usually something that’s easy to listen to, I think. I like having some melody, but, like, not also?”
“So like some orchestral stuff?”
“Yeah, I like some of the stuff from the DS. I had a DSi when I was growing up.”
“Oh, very nice! You play any games these days?”
“When I have time, but, well…” she gestured to the space. It was crawling with students from her university. They’d be putting on this same conference in a little over a year.
“I get it… yeah. But if you didn’t have to deal with all this, what would you be playing?”
She looked down at the floor for a moment to catch a thought.
“Probably Subnautica. Have you played it?”
“Not yet, but it’s on my list.” I made a mental note to bump it up a few notches on the priority scale.
“It’s really good, I really like it.”
“What do you like about it?”
She again looked at the floor for a moment.
“I like-” she clasped her hands together, “I like that it really feels like I’m exploring this world, and I have no idea what to expect.”
“Have you played Outer Wilds?”
“I haven’t! But I’ve heard only good things. I think that’s next on my list when I have time.”
“Mine too. I’ve heard it’s great if you want to dig deep into the feeling of, like, discovery.”
“I love games like that, I love playing these weird games where you sort of, like, look for things?”
A neon green light from behind the bar lit up.
“There’s a game I like; it’s kind of like that and it’s got a really good atmospheric- uh ambient soundtrack that can be good for studying. But it’s a little weird.”
“What’s it called?”
“Yume Nikki. Like Y-U-M-E N-I-K-K-I. It uh, looks like this.”
I fumbled with my phone to pull up a screenshot.
“Oh, it looks like Stardew Valley!”
“You can find it online for free. And it’s a little weird, like- again, I need to emphasize that like, you don’t play this game expecting to beat it. It’s a game you just kind of experience.” She nodded, mouth closed, clinging to each word. “You gotta go in just to walk around in it and see what you can find.”
“Okay, yeah. Sure!”
“I play a lot of games.”
“Where did you find this one?”
“I know a guy.”
I don’t know where I got my start with Yume Nikki, I think it must’ve been from one of the many YouTubers of my adolescence. Goron50 maybe? I do not claim to be a Yume Nikki “oldhead”, either. All I can tell you is that I played it once over a decade ago, and then I played it again on warm summer afternoon in 2017 while edible-stoned, and then I played it again in the autumn 2020 alone in my fifth floor apartment because it seemed like the thing to do given the world at the time. I know enough about Yume Nikki because I allowed myself to exist within spaces in which I could absorb the its cultural impact via osmosis.
In my online communities, this makes me more of an Average Joe. Someone’s for sure played Yume Nikki and then they went on to play Yume 2kki, and then they also probably played .flow or Ib or both or maybe they didn’t want to play more RPG Maker Horror games and so they opted to play Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea because that game looked cute enough, or maybe they just went and played Omori instead. I’ve played a handful of RPG Maker games. I’ve made a couple RPG Maker games. I wouldn’t call my experience with RPG Maker games “encyclopedic”, heck, not even “extensive”. I have barely removed the layer of topsoil covering the subterranean crypt that is the library of RPG Maker games.
“You know a guy.”
“I mean, yeah. I play a lot of games.” I left a small smirk on my lips, as I proceeded to open up my note-taking app on my phone. “See? This is where I keep track of them all.”
My notes are a lot. Maybe you’ve read them. Maybe I’ve shown them to you. They’re a lot. I’m writing the rough draft, and eventually the final draft of this entire piece in my notes. My notes are an extension of me. You can use some transitive logic to figure out how I feel about myself.
“That’s so cool!” She gazed upon the screen of my mobile device, watching my thumb make the letters of each filename whiz by. “And you just keep track of every game you play in here?”
“Every game, movie, book, tv show, album, podcast, thing I read, research idea, and otherwise interesting though I think is worth keeping. It goes in here eventually.” She looked back up at me. I read her expression as one of awe, gazing upon a stranger’s Library of Alexandria. “It’s a hobby.”
The uber to the bar came shortly afterwards. Our group of eight sauntered inside and ordered a round of tequila shots for the table. I ordered my own drink too, an “El Chapo” with tequila and some other nonsense. When in New Mexico. The bar was loud, perfect for losing my voice. But I just sat back and listened. Everyone else in the group came from the same school. I was just there with them, getting to know them 1. I was not in their group, I was sitting back and watching. Waiting for the time to talk, if it ever showed up.
And doing another round of tequila shots. The bar had run out of limes for eight shots, so I got the lone lemon. It was a citrus fruit. I didn’t mind.
Soon after some of my buddies local to the area joined us all, formally splitting the atomized conversation. As with cells, the conversation underwent mitosis, and small conversations began to emerge, breaking open the eight-person bubble. I found myself conversing with another guy in the group. As with all conversations with new people, things started out with a guarded trepidation. From the events of the weekend I learned that the best way to get people to open up to me was to first open up myself. So, I got to talking with another guy about games. I like talking about games, maybe you could tell.
As an example, I happen to love talking about games by System Erasure. Maybe you might remember me doing this earlier last year, what with my incessant praise of a simple little set of two, count ’em, two, video games: ZeroRanger and Void Stranger. They’re great games. They’ve got a wonderful visual style. They’re well-designed to maximize the “fun” that comes from games of their respective genre They’re made of that long-lost “good stuff” that all the “gaming isn’t what it used to be” YouTube video makers pine for. If you have not played either of these games, consider this a sign that you ought to. If you have played these games, I think you should go an listen to Void Symphony to feel that sense of “adventure” again.
“If that song doesn’t get your blood pumping, nothing will.”
This is what I would’ve told the guy I started talking to, had I been able to show him the music of Void Stranger. But of course, I couldn’t do that, what with the EDM mix playing over the bar’s speakers. So instead, I showed him the graphics.
“Have you heard of a game called ZeroRanger 2?”
“No, I haven’t, what’s it on?”
“Oh, it’s an indie game on PC.”
“Ah, yeah man, I think I have to play a lot more indies.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I played like Return of the Obra Dinn over Christmas. You try that one?”
“It’s on my list!” I made a mental note to bump it up a few notches on the priority scale. “But I know it’s got a really distinct visual style.”
“Yeah man, I think it looks sick.”
“Lemme show you what ZeroRanger looks like. It’s also got a very distinct visual style.” I pulled up a gif of the third stage on my phone where you have to shoot the worm circling a tower. “They know how to make a spectacle.”
“Oh damn.” His eyes were transfixed on the spiraling scene.
“Let me know show you what Void Stranger looks like. It’s a little different, but it’s got this retro look to it.” As I pulled up a screenshot of a random brane, I continued “It’s sort of a block pushing puzzle game. You just gotta reach the stairs to go deeper into the void, and the story kind of unravels the deeper and deeper you go.”
“And it’s all puzzles.”
“There are so many puzzles dude.”
“And what were these called?”
“ZeroRanger and Void Stranger.” I made sure to overenunciate every consonant over the bass.
“These are really cool. How did you find these?”
“I… Well, I have some folks I trust to give me the good stuff.”
“And you just play a lot of games despite everything you have to do?”
“Yeah,” I laughed, taking a swig of my drink, “it’s a hobby.”
“It’s so funny man, I would’ve never expected to be talking with you about video games out at a bar.”
“No?”
“I mean, you were all business during the entire weekend.”
I smiled, “I had some responsibilities to take care of.”
I am the Chair of a committee relevant to every single student in this organization3. I had been attending conferences like these for almost seven years now. I knew what to expect. I had been going to these events long enough to be the one buying the alcohol for the undergrads. I remember my first conference of this kind, and remembering how, at twenty years old, immediately overwhelmed I was by everything and everyone. Everyone seemed so smart, so capable, so aware of all the context surrounding every single thing happening. ‘Yeah we’re going to bars, and we can get you in even if you’re not 21, don’t worry’ and ‘Yeah, you’ll want to go to this hotel room, that’s where everyone’s drinking. I heard someone brought absinthe’, and so on and so forth. I remember my fifth conference of this nature where I, twenty-four years old, had to reprimand undergrads for handing out edibles to strangers while at a barcade in Knoxville, and feeling so cool knowing that I could convince professionals to give me their drink tickets. And now here I was, twenty-six years old, leaning back in my seat, knowing I had nothing else to prove. It was my turn to be the one making sure things ran smoothly and supplying the answers as needed.
So perhaps my title was part of the reason why this man, himself a first year master’s Student, found my recommendations so meaningful. I cannot deny that my role in this society has afforded me a strong dose of social clout. He didn’t know of my history. I figure he just saw some relatively older guy who had been able to answer every question sent his way over the course of the weekend. A guy who had been able to keep a meeting on track down to the minute. A guy who was now throwing back shots of tequila without a second thought.
One of the many goals I had this weekend was this: When meeting people for the first time, I would not ask them “so what do you do?”. Despite being at literally a professional academic conference would not reinforce the facade that people’s work is their single passion in life. I mean, we were all these because we shared this single interest, right? In my closing speech at my committee meeting, I made this point clear.
“Look around this room. We’re all here because we have a shared vision of what we want the future to be. And we all have different skills and passions and interests that will allow us all to achieve those goals, so long as we’re willing to take the time and embrace these interests. The people who came before us did exactly what we must do today: invest in every curious part of ourselves.”
I did not ask people “what are you studying?”. I asked them “What do you like to do when you’re not studying?”. We all knew everyone here had some kind of homework assignment due. That was boring to me. I wanted to be someone that people could open up to even if it was about something in which I had less than zero interest in. I could only hope people would do the same for me.
“Zero Ranger and…”
“Void Stranger.”
“Void Stranger.” He tapped the names of the games into his notes app on his phone. Let him thank whatever deity in which he finds solace that I did not tell him about Linda Cube Again. Once finished, he closed his phone and steered the narrative back toward conferences.
“So you’ve been to a lot of these kinds of things.”
“Yeah.” My throat was getting sore from the liquor and the volume of the conversation. I glanced over at the future conference chair, she was leaning back, taking sips from her drink, listening to the room around her.
By 12:30 AM the lights had come up in the bar. Conversations became more manageable, which became questions of “where are the bathrooms?” and “where are we going next?”.
I turned to my buddy Louis, one of the New Mexico locals.
“Louis, let’s hit up that taco truck.”
He squinted his eyes and gave me a smirk and a nod. “Yeah man, let’s do it.”
And so we made our way to the front of the bar, out the door and onto the Albuquerque streets. It was starting to snow. The future conference hosts had never seen snow at this time of year this far South. I hadn’t seen snow at this time of year this far South either. But snow didn’t phase me. I had had five tequila drinks and I wanted tacos.
The night prior Louis had taken me to that taco truck. They were the best tacos I had had in my life. I told myself that if I was ever in the area again, I would go and get them again. Twenty-four hours later, there I was, now leader of the pack, bringing everyone to the exact same spot 4.
“You know man,” Louis said as we jaywalked no more than two yards from the crosswalk, “last night when I brought you here? It was the first time I had ever been here.”
“Wait really?”
“Yeah man, my buddy told me about it and it was in the area so I figured, you know, let’s try it.”
“It was a good call, dude.”
“Man, and now we’re back here. That’s so funny.”
“I said last night if I came back I was trying those Tacos Al Pastor. Lemme know how much I owe you.”
“You just want two?” Louis and I had an understanding.
“Yeah, two’s great.”
I settled down in a chair far too fancy for the sidewalk on which it sat. I crossed my legs and interlocked my fingers as I leaned back and looked up at the night sky. Diffusing tobacco and marijuana smoke lingered from people who had been walking down the street. Latin Pop was blasting on a nearby speaker. People were having loud conversations as they waited for their food. I too would be having another conversation soon, but for that one moment, I was taking in every single feeling. All I had to do was wait. It was 1:00 AM, snowing, and I was doing alright.
The others slowly drifted their way over to where I sat, the next conference Chair choosing to sit in the other fancy chair next to me.
“How’re you doing?”
“I’m good, Louis has my order. You gonna get anything?”
“No, I’m not really hungry.”
“You having a good time?”
“Yeah! I think I am.”
“You think you are?”
“Yeah, I think I am.” She rubbed her cheek with her fingers. “I didn’t expect it to be snowing.”
“Me neither.”
One of the girls from group cut in. “Hey B! you want anything?”
“I’m fine, thank you! I’m still full from dinner.”
“You gonna ask him those questions?”
I maintained a plain expression.
“Yeah, business stuff. Yeah.” My seated questioner nodded; eyes perhaps glazed from the alcohol.
“Sure! you just let me know if you want anything B.” The interrupter returned to dancing to the music.
“So, you have questions.”
“Yes. I do.”
“Well I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
“And you don’t mind?”
“I’ll let you know if they’re getting under my skin.”
“Okay, so, like- okay. Gimme a sec.” She fumbled with her hands. I sat there with my legs crossed and my fingers interlocked. “Do you ever have trouble, like, running the SSC?”
“Sure.”
“Um, do you mind, like- I guess I’m just a little stuck because, like-” she let out a breath. “So, I’m really the good cop in our conference planning.” I paused to consider the unintended oxymoron. “And Kira is sort of the bad cop. It doesn’t… bother me, but,” she let out another sigh, this one more frustrated. “I guess I want to know if you’ve had any trouble being a leader.”
“Sure.” I moved for the first time in several minutes, adjusting my legs to open to her while still facing the taco truck. “I’ve been called a dictator before. I know that I can be controlling, a bit of a snob. I try not to be, but it happens. I’m not going to pretend like it doesn’t.” I picked at a flap of dead skin on my thumb, still feeling a buzz. “But I also know that there needs to be someone who keeps things moving forward. There needs to be someone who isn’t afraid to be excited about the projects, and to get other people excited too. We’re people of action. Now granted, we’re volunteering our time, so of course I can’t ask the world of them, but- y’know, they volunteered to help.”
It was 1:23 AM and a light snow was falling. I was sobering up from my five drinks of tequila drank three different ways.
“But how do you know that you’re not going to make someone upset?”
I turned my head toward the question.
“I just understand that I’m being as considerate as I can when I decide I need to stand up for myself.”
“And do you-” she sighs, “How do you just not worry about what other people will think?”
I looked up at the white speckles on the black canvas. It was the first question all weekend I did not have an immediate answer to.
She waited.
“Tacos!” Louis came with a styrofoam platter with four tacos, two for me. “You hold onto it man, I’ll come back for mine when you’re done. Don’t let me interrupt you.”
“Thanks Louis.” It was a good diversion. It gave me a second to think as I took a bite. God those tacos were so good. I took a second bit and started to speak again.
“I mean- I worry about that a lot.” I raced through the words as I chewed
She pursed her lips, but her eyes had that deep uncertainty to them. I sensed that I needed to keep going. I swallowed and focused on a stain on the sidewalk.
“I think about it all the time. What I say, how I say it. What I do, how I do it. I think about what it all means to be me. I don’t know what it means yet.. I’m trying to figure it out. I have some answers, but, like, I don’t have all of them, you know?” She nodded. “So I’m trying to give myself the chance to figure it all out.”
“I just- how do you do that?”
“Well, therapy.”
“Sure.” She snorted some air out of her nose. It turned into vapor and dissipated. “You just seem so confident all the time.”
“Well so do you.”
“I’m not.”
“Well you fooled me.”
“I guess. Like, between the way you run things and you have all these things figured out and you like- just… I dunno.” I let her compose her thought. “I’m just like, afraid of being someone people don’t like.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. I think, like, it’s because I don’t want to mess up.”
“Well, that makes two of us.”
“But like- okay, better question. How do you go and figure these things out? how did you figure out what makes you, you?”
I held any stark reactions. Better to be sincere and unjudgmental.
“I sort of let myself ask questions about everything. Who I am, why I do what I do. If I’m kinda already thinking about myself all the time, why not, like, try and be productive with it?”
“Yeah.”
“So, like, for example, I ask myself, ‘Am I happy when I wear this jacket?’” I pulled on my gray, eight-year-tattered jacket sleeve. “I notice: ‘It’s comfortable, it fits me well, keeps me warm’, yes those are true. But I also ask ‘Do I like how I look when I wear it?’ for example. Sometimes the question is ‘What do I look like to others right now?’. I try to ask that one less these days.”
“So you’re more concerned about yourself?”
“Well it’s not that, it’s more like, I’m not afraid to ask myself the hard questions. Questions that have answers that might make me uncomfortable.”
“Like what?”
“Like, my relationships, my career, my gender, to name a few.”
“You…” her brow furrowed. “I mean, you’ve explored your gender?”
“Sure. I’m pretty content being a man both sitting here with everyone around and when I’m all by myself. But I let myself ask, like ‘do I feel comfortable existing within the expected representation of being a man?’. And like, it’s not like I have to tell anyone else the answer to that. Not unless I want to.”
She nodded with her shoulders. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it like that. Do you think it’s been good for you to do?”
“Explore my gender?”
My rhetorical question caught the attention of the other students in the group. One asked “Wait, what do you mean, explore your gender?”
I spoke with a touch more authority and projected towards the guy who had inquired, “Do I like being a man. You ever ask yourself that question? What it means to be a man?” He nodded. “That’s what I mean.” The others also nodded and resumed conversations, some now discussing the new topic. 5
I took another bite of taco and turned back to my conversation partner. “Well I don’t like to lie to myself. Have you ever asked yourself why you like being a girl?”
“I mean… not intentionally… but like thinking about it in the way you talk about it, I mean, yeah there are parts of being a girl that I don’t really like. I think maybe I like doing some more masculine things than the average girl.”
“The average girl?”
“Or like, you know, what the world sort of perceives as ‘being a girl.’” She lifted and flexed her fingers in the air to mimic quotation marks. ” I guess I’ve always been more into the things that the other guys do.”
“Does it bother you that you like these things more?”
“I don’t know… I don’t know!”
I gestured, holding my last bite of the last taco. “Well maybe you start there. You don’t gotta do anything about how you answer unless you feel like it. That’s what I mean.”
“Yeah…”
“Maybe a better way to think about it-” I swallowed my final bite, “is like, start here: ‘What do you like?’ then ask ‘Why do you like it?’. Once you have an initial answer, that’s it. Just be curious about yourself. You’re not being conceited if you’ve never tried it before. You can hold onto it, you can let it go. Maybe write it down. I’ve got my notes.”
“And you’re not worried about what other people think about it?”
“Who says you have to tell anyone?”
“I just… I guess I’ve never really taken the time to, like ask myself these things.”
“And it doesn’t have to be all at once.”
“Right. It’s just so tough because I’ve always been this person who, like, is so afraid. I’ve been so afraid to voice how I feel that I think that it’s almost gotten easier to just not have a strong feeling one way or another about a lot of stuff. I don’t want to be like that, but I’m also so worried about making people upset with me. Do you ever feel that way?”
“Not that I’m dodging your question, but let me ask you: Are you upset when someone tell you that they like a song? Do you get mad when someone says that they like to wear a certain kind of jacket? Do you think I got mad when you told me that you listened to video game music when you studied?”
“No.”
I gave her a “Well there you go” gesture. “Granted, it might be easier for me to say this, but I accept that I’m me. For better or for worse, this mass of fermenting dregs 6 is who I am. I’m just trying to be curious and let myself explore all these questions. I can only hope that as I go about answering these questions I can leave a positive impact on folks as I go.”
Louis walked back over. I handed him the platter. “These were so good dude.”
“Man, I’m glad you liked it. It makes me feel really good I could leave a good impression.”
My conversation partner spoke up. “It’s been really fun tonight. Thank you for all the recommendations.”
“Happy to show you a good time,” said Louis as he proceeded to insert a part of his first taco into his mouth. Someone mentioned getting an uber. This set off the chain reaction.
I turned back to my conversation partner, “hopefully this wasn’t too deep for Student Conference.”
She sighed, closed her eyes, and smiled. “No… I think I needed to hear this. I think it’ll be good to think about. Because, like, I don’t know when the last time I really thought about ‘myself’ was. And I want to be myself. I don’t want to just take that for granted.”
It was after these words that someone asked her if she was ubering back with them and that it was just around the corner. She turned and finished her thought. “Thank you for listening and answering my questions. I appreciate it, a lot.”
“Just text me or email me if you have any others. I’m happy to help if I can.”
“For sure. And do you have a way back to the hotel?”
“Louis is driving me back.” My flight out of Albuquerque was at 8:30 AM, it was almost 2. The end of the night had arrived.
When I ask myself, what to make of that evening, I struggle. I look at the person who was able to answer all this girl’s questions and I wonder if I really actually said everything I said. I know I said it and I know I meant it and I know that I would say it again every single time. Still, to be so certain of my own knowledge of what it means to be “yourself”, where did I get that?
Shit, I’m still figuring this whole “self” thing out. I can tell you facts, I can show you empirical evidence, I can speak with confidence, I can share my hobbies with enthusiasm, but that’s still incomplete. That’s only the data that I have on hand. Is it enough to speak definitively? Maybe if I keep scraping the bottom of the ocean, harvesting enough samples to obtain a statistical inference based on a set of observations, one day I’ll know for sure. Until then, I can only share what I know, embrace what I don’t, and keep looking for the answers to life’s persistent questions. Isn’t that what we’re all doing?
I think it’s crucial to accept that you will never make every single person happy. This is a particularly difficult thing to internalize in our modern age. Everything we do, make, express, experience, must be generally marketable. We have to find the ways we can bend our own loves into something that others might want to support. But how do we explain a hobby that doesn’t make us money to someone who only cares about the bottom line? We must remember that we will never make everyone happy. So if you cannot “sell” your “self” in an elevator, are you a failure? No, of course not. If your hobby is finance related, then that’s great, don’t let me stop you. But I know that my hobby of playing video games and then writing about them and the other forms of media I enjoy will never directly compensate me. My rent isn’t paid in paragraphs about Yume Nikki or Void Stranger.
But I also know that I am a happier person for each fleeting moment I get to talk about the things I love. I am a happier person when I can sit and listen to someone gushing about their favorite “thing”, whatever that may be (within reason of course). I was never looking to buy nor barter, I was only looking to share.
Those Wacky Footnotes
as an aside that I can’t seem to insert anywhere meaningfully, every single person in this group filled a different sitcom personality niche. Every single person in this group was very distinct and could easily be identified by both looks and personality. I don’t know if I’ve been able to say that about a group of seven other real-world people in a very long time. There was literally zero overlap amongst them aside from general skin tone.↩︎
yes, I was able to speak with italicized text. it’s one of the many superpowers handling radioactive materials has afforded me.↩︎
I won’t reveal the the details and inner workings of this committee, but just know that it’s something I’ve been working towards for a long time.↩︎
another aside: have you ever thought about what your life would look like if you could see it in the way the Tralfamadoreans could? Like looking at a mountain range? Like how you could theoretically follow the path of the space you’ve taken up? I think the 24 hour loop my life took these two nights would be particularly amusing.↩︎
Do you think it was an “overshare” to answer this question with such frank expression? I don’t think so. Maybe one of them did. But then, that was their opinion, and it didn’t bother me.↩︎
yes, i did say this, yes i am a dork.↩︎