My Hobbies

Arts & Crafts

Art! My main hobby for sure, something that goes back to about 6th grade, if not earlier. It started with doodling in my notebooks at school and blossomed into an intense passion I dedicated years of my life to. When I was younger, about 18-20 or so, I really wanted to be a professional artist. I even went to school for it! But, it wasn't in the cards at the time. It didn't matter much that I drew constantly and found myself plenty inspired and motivated, I didn't have the heart to accept what it means to be a modern artist that lives off of their work. The fantasy I had about it all was crushed, and I've struggled to regain that spark ever since.

I still draw! Occasionally, anyway. I also paint once a year or so, or find myself playing with clay or wood. Art will always be something I'm drawn to, I think, especially when I need money lol. I also dabble in making perlers.

Cooking & Nutrition

Now, cooking wasn't something I was terribly interested in outside of playing house or making microwave abominations as a kid, but after my career in art sort of fell through, I found myself turning to food as a source of comfort. My blooming interest in Veganism had sort of forced me to figure out how to cook for myself, and I found that I actually really enjoyed it. I loved learning about the nutritional qualities of food and exploring cultures my rural southern upbringing hadn't ever shown me. I ended up going to Culinary School for awhile and almost got my degree, but my school unfortunately shut down due to COVID-19 before I could graduate. And no, I didn't get my $18k back.

While I still do enjoy cooking, I've fallen out of love with it for the most part. It'd be a bit too personal to go into why, but I do miss it quite a lot and hope my love can bloom again in the future.

Gaming

My parents were always avid gamers. Before I was born, they were dumping paychecks at the arcade and stealing formula so they could afford an Atari. I was raised on CD-ROM edutainment games, NES games like Zelda and Paperboy, and later on, PS1 and N64 games like Spyro and Donkey Kong 64. It was always a bonding experience between me and my mom, who otherwise rarely saw eye-to-eye. She'd play while I read out the printed-out walkthroughs, or I'd play for her while she cooked or cleaned. We played through Final Fantasy X and Wind Waker this way, and I still think back on those moments fondly.

As a teen, I wasn't really into games at all outside of flash games and guitar hero, though I did dabble with Kingdom Hearts, Castlevania, various Tycoon and Sims games, and games like Command and Conquer. This all changed dramatically around 2016, when my friends encouraged me to play games like Terraria, Minecraft, and Don't Starve Together. I went from having never really been a PC gamer and having missed out on huge milestones, to getting tendonitis and eye strain problems from gaming so hard for so long. I became fervently obsessed with Valve after playing over thousands of hours of Team Fortress 2, jumping right into inhaling Portal and Half-Life like my whole life depended on it.

My Steam library currently has hundreds of games in it with thousands of hours, and I've clocked in quite a few on Epic and Itch.io, as well. I've become really fond of games like Undertale, Valheim, Disco Elysium, and more. So many fantastic games, and so little time... And while I don't really play as many games anymore, they all still hold a special place in my heart.

Herbalism & Botany