Three months ago, I was a kid. Today, I’m a kid. Three years from now, I’ll still be a kid. I don’t know what this “adulthood” thing is, but I sure as hell wish there was a manual.

I worked hard in high school and before that, and I got what I thought I wanted, a full ride to school at a prestigious engineering college in Ohio. A full ride to a place with a four foot tall symbol of the engineering honors fraternity stark against the red brick backdrop of the relatively new school buildings. A full ride to a place where I will spend a year discovering that as much as I enjoy mashing numbers to solve puzzles, I’d much rather waste my time away with friends and video games.

Oh, and guess what? Now I’m the head producer for something like a video game and telling what some people might call jokes on stage.

It’s strange – Just nine short years ago, I am a freshly converted eleven year old agnostic, still crying at night over the recent loss of his precious father, dreading the “Big Move” across the country to a college town known only to me as a town like “that one town over by Italy somewhere right?”.

The biggest difference between Utah and Ohio, if you were to ask me nine years ago, is how god damn sticky the air is. I spent my first night awake in my bed convinced that I was sleeping in a puddle, that the air was literally sweating buckets. And the bugs! Those whining, droning beetles the size of a walnut that wouldn’t stop screaming “fuck me!” in their native tongue.

I’ve got a twisted history, with bumps, bruises and tangled plot turns strewn willy-nilly throughout my past. I grew up in Utah, moved to Ohio when I was eleven, moved to North Carolina after my first year of highschool, moved back to Ohio for college. I’ve been to three elementary schools, one middle school, and four highschools. I spent my years in elementary school with Mormon friends, in middle school as the lanky kid to pick on, in highschool as the perpetual new kid. With every move I invented a persona, a likeable yet enigmatic individual that wouldn’t draw the wrong kind of attention. I’ve been the nerd, the anime kid, the band geek, the oddball, the underdog, the asshole, the loner, the weird kid, and the king pin of cliques.

I’ve worn many hats and thrown away every single one of them, including my graduation cap. I’m glad I did, only recently did I realize that people don’t care who you are or what you do – it’s only what you can bring to the table. I intend to bring enough to share with everybody.

(to be continued)