I have always had a ton of different interests! This has led me to pursuing many hobbies over the years, and gave me a wide variety of knowledge and skills. I always enjoy learning more about the things I am passionate about, which leads me down some interesting internet rabbit holes! In general, there are a few main categories to my major interests: Music, Reading, Film, Animation, Technology, and Gaming.
Music
When it comes to music, I grew up in a very musical family, so I was exposed to lots of music as a child. My mom was a huge 80’s music and general pop music fan, so she introduced me to a lot of different bands like Def Leppard, Evanescence, and Linkin Park. My dad is much more into classical music, barbershop, bluegrass, and country, so I learned much older music from him. In school I learned to play trumpet and french horn in classical, jazz, and marching bands. With all of this experience, I developed an appreciation and enjoyment for pretty much all different types of music, but my absolute favorites are probably EDM and soundtrack music (John Williams is the man!).
Reading
Ever since I was little, I have been an avid reader, and I mostly read fiction books in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Growing up, some of my favorite books were The Redwall series, the Harry Potter series, the Uglies series, and the Ender’s Game series. As I got older I read much more, and some of my favorites are the Dune series, the Hyperion series, the Red Rising series, the Stormlight Archives, and The Kingkiller Chronicle. There are so many more to name, but I couldn’t possibly name them all.
More recently, I got into reading web novels, manga, and manhwa. The series that I recommend the most is definitely the Worm webnovel by Wildbow. That series had a powerful impact on me, and I think about it often. I am excited for that series to be officially published some day. For manga, I really enjoy reading Vinland Saga and Skip Beat.
Film and Animation
The first movie I ever saw in theaters was The Lion King, and ever since then I’ve been hooked on film and animation. I love watching movies and shows, and learning about how films are made, both live action and animation. It’s incredible how the movie magic is achieved, particularly in older films where the technology wasn’t as advanced as it is today and they had to get creative to produce certain effects.
I will watch pretty much any genre of movie or show, though I’m not a huge fan of shows that focus on embarrassment or cringeworthy content, and I’m not super into horror. I also grew up watching anime and really started getting into it in college. It still amazes me how much breadth there is to stories that are told in the anime medium.
Technology
With a lot of my other interests, there is an element of technology involved that naturally grew into a fascination with many different forms of technology. I was particularly interested in computers, and I ended up taking this pursuit to the point of getting a Ph.D. in computer science. I also started getting into building computers in college, and have since built over ten different machines for myself and others. Recently, I made my first fully water cooled system for a friend of mine, which was stressful but rewarding.
Gaming
The first ever video games I played were on my dad’s computer with games like Mine Sweeper, Missile Command, Snake, etc… Eventually, I bought my first video game console, which was an original Game Boy that I found at a yard sale in my neighborhood for $5, which came with Pokémon Red. From that point on, video games became a big part of my life. I mostly played either solo games or games I that I could play with my brother, cousin, or friends. The games that probably had the most impact on me when I was growing up were the Pokémon games, the Kingdom Hearts games, Age of Empires, and World of Warcraft.
Since then, I have mostly been playing PC games, with the occasional console game here and there when I had access to a game console. Most of my favorite games either have an interesting storyline or have some interesting game mechanics or strategy to them. Some of my more recent favorites are Overwatch, Stellaris, Stardew Valley, the Horizon Series, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the Fallout Series, Skyrim, The Outer Worlds, Cyberpunk 2077, the Metro Series, the Bioshock series, the Life is Strange Series, The Witcher 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Firewatch, and Red Dead Redemption 2. There are just so many interesting stories that can be told with video games that put you directly in the action and have you directly impact how the story is told. I remember a quote from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, “The future of storytelling, it’s going to be video games. I don’t think it’s going to be filmmakers who figure out how to do that. But (video games) feels like kind of the most groundbreaking storytelling.”