I see a lot of folk add their life stories here, so I think to make clarity I will add mine:
The early years
I was apparently 14 days postpartum when I would not sleep, and tried to stand up at the sides of the crib (my son did similar by 9 months he banged the side of the crib to wake us up to feed him or to pick him up, was walking by his first birthday)
The obsessions came early, at four years of age, with electronic circuit boards, car speedometers, and flashlights.
The obsessions with things changed somewhat over the years but never stopped
The primary school years
From my first school year, I have had issues/difficulties with dealing with others on a social level, this was picked up in my first school year already, and my parent's response to this was immense anger and to remove me from the school. The obsessions/strong interests kept with electronics, but changed to electrical plugs and sockets, switches, breakers, lamps, batteries, and motors.
During these primary phase years, a lot of times I would be sent by the school, to testing centres, often being pitted against other kids 4 years older than me. When I turned 10 years old, the electronics thing became far more serious and I started to attempt to figure it out, to the detriment of my academic performance.
My parents intervened and limited my time with electronics to school vacations only, which just made it worse. They eventually gave up and I then went for it full tilt, which worsened my social skills even further. I just didn't care about others, I was more interested in figuring out how to build circuits, and how to get LEDs to flash on their own. By the time I hit 12 years of age, I was able to build kits and the like.
The high school years
With the teenage years, came the awkwardness and even less ability to interact with people, especially girls. This led me to pull even more inward and then I began to become obsessed with electronics, not only that, by that time I was doing stuff with electrical things. Also, the artistic side began to emerge. I became a serious fan of Matt Groening's stuff, which led to me being ridiculed badly at school (back then it was considered to be madness to like any toons, even if it was meant for adults). Shortly after that I found Sonic the Hedgehog and since then I have been the hardcore fan I am today. I kept Sonic a private thing because of the ridicule at school, only coming out with it when it was fashionable to do so (more on this later).
When I was 16, I had this idea I could design and build a radio receiver, it was a ridiculous idea based on some stupid insult and wager in class. Needless to say I went for it with all that I was worth. Took me a year and a half to figure out how radio receivers work, but crack it I did, I remember in April 1992, I built the thing I designed and when I put power on, it picked up whatever was on the frequency it happened to be tuned to, and in stereo aswell. Based on this, I went even further in, and became more anti-sociable, the following year I was attempting to program microcontrollers without a computer, doing assembly language by hand on paper, and programming EPROM by hand with dip-switches.
Post High School
After high school, I basically did some college study towards electronic engineering but could only get to a certain level due to the fact that I had to start working and earning money to support myself. So by 1996 I was working full time for a local telco as a technician. That was when the next stage of obsessions started. I became obsessed with computers.
During that period, I was basically clamouring to get anything new, i.e. CD writer, DVD player, Pentium II, all that kind of thing. Then in 1999 I found out what SEGA were doing, with their new (and last) console, and I became hooked again with Sonic, and spent vast sums on games, fan websites, and the whole bang shoot.
During this time I also discovered anime, and I spent a number of years running an anime club here. Amassed a massive collection of anime on DVD. I am pretty much convinced that ADV Films and RightStuf Anime made a good amount of profit from just me alone.
I also moved from job to job, because I do not adapt well to most working environments. Noise gets to me, people's attitudes towards those of us with less than stellar social skills, and of course, the places I happen to choose to work at, are usually ones that I should never even have considered.
Getting Married
Eventually I met a woman with the patience of a saint, in 2004, after many awkward and downright disastrous relationships. I was then able to move away from my parents, and then come out of my shell with her encouragement. The first thing to come out was my still, ever present obsessions with things. These are, in no particular order:
* Street lamps
* Water meters
* Electricity meters
* Electronic components - particularly displays and LEDs
* Anime
* Sonic The Hedgehog
* Fonts/typefaces
* Furry
Encouraged by this woman, I eventually came out with everything slowly and she allows me to be the person I want to be and allows me to spend some money (not ALL I HAD, like I used to) on some of these obsessions.
The last item on the list is relatively new. I have always had the childhood dream of fursuiting, and being part of furry fandom, but as many here will confirm, the fandom is NOT A NICE PLACE TO BE. Too many perverts, too many alpha male wolves appointed to forum admin positions (which they abuse), and in general, its all about the sex. I don't see the need for it, and this kind of doesn't sit well with them, because somehow if I am not willing to let my fursona have genitals then I am not one of them. I don't have a fursuit at present, because it costs a lot of money and because wearing those things make me sweat buckets, literally.
But yes, in conclusion I am a very complex individual, and the most astonishing thing for me at this time is seeing all of this come out in my son, whose current obsessions are- anthro animals, making videos, photography, VoIP telephones, buses, Sonic The Hedgehog, Paw Patrol, and fans.
I have also come to realize that working as an electronic engineer was never really "me" I just did it because some aspects of it was cool, but the pressure of the job, and also, the post-project depressions were big problems. So I thought "let's do IT now that I can code in C and Java". That was even worse... so much worse for me I began to job hop even quicker.
So now, at 41 I have to try and figure out what it is I can do, to put food on the table, while being able to enjoy it and keep at it for more than 24 months. I would love to get into artistic stuff, like game design, graphic arts, and all those, but alas, its really hard without the piece of paper.
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Sonic The Hedgehog Forever!
13 Dec 2016, 6:25 am
