Hiii! My name is Serenity. I feel really weird about putting this kind of thing on the internet. I haven't done this kind of thing since Myspace. Even on the social meida I've used over the years I've made the "about me" section pretty short and simple. I feel weird talking about myself, but I know how much starting to keep a journal helped me, and I'm hoping this is simlarly a net positive.

I am a software engineer professionally. Or that's part of my title anyway. Realistcally I'm a fixer. When something technical comes up, I'm the one that deals with it. Most of my work these days is cyber related because of that.

But let me leave my work behind. I think building your identity on your job is toxic if that job isn't your passion. I do this work because it's easy for me and it pays well, not because I want to. My work funds my private life.

To that end, I guess the "about me" should be an intro of some kind?

I am queer, she/her, a lover of technology, and hella ADHD. I've had so many hobbies over the years. I started writing code because I wanted to make video games. I was 10-11ish and finally decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to make games. I looked up what went into that and decided that programming was the part I wanted to do.

I got my hands on game maker (long before it was acquired), learned some basics that carried over to learning Blitz Basic after a few months. From there it was dominoes. By the time I was ready for college I had already abandoned the dream and went for a career I knew would be easy. I was still writing code for fun, making little games (360 being a devkit by default was so cool) and fiddling around.

I moved around a bit, got into card games. It started with MTG, but quickly it got to the point that if you slapped ink on cardboard and gave me a rulebook I was in on it. To an extent it's still that way today, but the LGS I played at shut down and that really killed a lot of my passion.

I found my way to fighting games after that. It's been a favorite genre since I played SF2 in the arcade as a kid. But I pretty much exclusively played single player content. I dabbled in Super Street Fighter 4 on the 360 with online mode, but never took it seriously. This time I went to locals, a cafe was hosting weekly meetups. I walked in, felt super awkward, kind of just wandered around and watched people. Until this sweet trans woman saw me, called me over, and started info dumping on me about Hokuto No Ken and the wild shit in that game. She made me feel welcome and I went in hard on fighting games. I made some of my best friends at those locals.

Covid hit, locals died. I picked up a new card game in Flesh and Blood, fell in love, made friends, fell out of love (that game is hella expensive), and that LGS also closed down. That was also hard, but not nearly as bad as the first LGS closing on me. That first place was home, to the point I moved states to live near it.

Now I find myself feeling... bad. I've lived vicarously through social media for a while. I have a lot of friends that I see semi-regularly, but the day to day is social media and work. My partner and I TikTok a lot, which is fun and I enjoy that time with her. But in general, social media is a net negative for my mental health. Between the general enshitifcation, LLM's flooding, and conservative trolls, I just feel miserable.

That's where I am now. That's why I'm here. I'm building this site as an outlet that is away from the social media as much as I reasonably can. It's a future-proof place of peace for myself. If social media sites go down, I still have this and can move my content. If my host dies, I can host it myself. This is my place.