I Speak Out With My Geek Out!

I'm freestyling this one instead of writing it up in Word first, because it's late but I still wanted to get something up for Speak Out With Your Geek Out. My apologies if this is not as polished as some of my other posts here, but I hope you'll bear with me.

I won't retread any geeky ground as I revisit my path to geekdom here. I've already done my fair share of, well, sharing little peeks into that world of video games, comics and roleplaying games here, here, here, here and here. I try to keep from going geek overload on this blog, instead using my Tumblr for the kind of stuff that doesn't quite fit into a blog about writing. Still, this event focuses on writing about being a geek, and since I'm a geek who writes, I should take the time to address that huge part of my life.

As I write this, I'm surrounded by pieces of my geek life. Cloud and Tifa stand atop my computer, guarding it with a wild-eyed dragon, though my name tag from the DigitalLA panel on digital comics infiltrated one side. When I pause to take a drink and consider my words, it's from a travel mug adorned with J!NX stickers. Behind my monitor, Cap's shield peeks from behind like a rising sun, a souvenir from my coverage of a comic book store event for Comic Booked. To the left of me are boxes of comic books and my World of Warcraft hoodie. To the right, a bookcase that is patrolled vigilantly by Optimus Prime, Spike, and a trio of characters from Kingdom Hearts. Behind me lies another bookcase full of role-playing books, predominantly from White Wolf Publishing, and mostly Mage books.

My life is filled to the brim with geekiness. On Tuesday nights, my friends and I get together around a conference room table and roll dice for Game Night. On Wednesday night, I'll get together with other friends and tear it up on either Xbox or Wii. I drive to work with fuzzy d20 dice hanging from my rear-view mirror, and my rear bumper is decorated with the blood elf emblem. On my wrist is a bracelet that says GEEK. I may be dressed in a button-down shirt, but my undershirt says "U.S. Department of Gaming Affairs" on it... and I may or may not be wearing Transformers boxers. And that's only my work attire. Once I'm out of the office, I fly my geek flag proudly with a legion of geeky t-shirts that declare my dragonslaying prowess, or my love of 8-bit games, or that my d10 does indeed go up to 11.

I love my geeky life. I love that I write about comics and pop culture for Comic Booked. I love that both Star Wars and Star Trek are part of my lexicon thanks to my mom. I love that I can quote Ghostbusters or The Princess Bride and my friends will follow it up with the next line of dialogue. I love that I have friends who draw comics and create shows for the web and sing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer villains. And I love that the world is full of people just like me who live geeky lives and aren't ashamed to admit it.

I also love that my gorgeous partner Loki brought over The Crow tonight... both the graphic novel and the movie. I'll cut this short, but expect more geekiness later in the week!