etsu

I only found out today that Pier 1 closed all their physical locations. This hit me quite hard; I know I didn’t really purchase stuff from them, but it was a place I loved to stroll, explore and just basically browse. It was one of the top 5 places I’d go to when back at ETSU, short of Starbucks, the mall and and Books A Million.

As a matter of fact, Pier 1 in Johnson City was in the same plaza. I’d just park one spot and walk to both.

Usually I’d go there Saturday evenings, when I got bored at home or wanted to stretch my legs. Sometimes on a Sunday; but usually Saturday. I was frequenting the store almost every week in 2012, especially after I moved back to ETSU in the fall.

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This is a dream entry from after I came out of school in 2013. While nothing noteworthy sets it up above others, I do remember the last scene vividly; I do believe something more was at play here. So here goes.

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Original Dream Date: July 7, 2013

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Dream started out with me in my bedroom. Some German person (probably a guy but pretty sure it was a girl, not sure) commissioned me to make 8 portraits of young women. They would’ve been from the waist up, early 20s; as if they were sitting and staring at the viewer, hands in their lap.

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I saw this going around on Instagram and deviantART, so I decided to hop on and do it myself. Here’s my collage of art in a decade.

 

As you can see, it varies up and down, but only has taken big steps in the last 2ish years. My art was on the cusp of going forward in 2013, then I regressed and it was like I started drawing from scratch all over again to a point. I know I’m very glad with the progress I made, but I feel like it’s progress I should’ve made when I was 6-7 years younger, not when I’m in my early 30s’.

 

Better late than never, however! Here’s to 2020 being a year I make good milestones and outproduce what I did previously! I think constant work hours has to do with me getting better.

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In 2005, I was basking in the sudden influx of uninterrupted Internet access at Walters State Community College. DeviantArt was my 2nd go-to place, I was getting a lot more writing done and I could use the Internet without having to bother what my parents would say.

A lot of time would be spent here. Hours beyond than what I usually needed to be at school. All because I didn’t have a proper computer at home, and didn’t have free Internet access.

It was one afternoon in early fall of 2007, I had joined a forum and discovered by the name of Game Maker. The people of the forum had recommended it to me when I have voiced how I wanted to make a game. I figured that I would bomb at computer programming since I had failed Visual Basic a semester before. What harm would it be to fool around with it?

Turns out I was wrong.

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In 2007 I was coming to the realization that I was barely making headway with friends and social life at college. Everyone was so country, dating someone or people old enough to be your parents. I wasn’t part of the “I graduated from Morristown High School” group, the ghetto click or “redneck romeo”. I was really standalone, slowly discovering that there were more sociable people online than the people in front of me.

In February or March of that year I had started getting into contact with one of my cousins. He, his brother and another cousin were all attending East Tennessee State University, or ETSU. I hadn’t talked to them much earlier, but was beginning to learn that this mystical college was well within reach. All I had known that it was a big school and was more like a “university”.

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As extremely odd as it sounds, I’ve only recently owned a second laptop. I’ve always owned the same one or done without. It was a monumental move for me to get a second laptop after the cooling fan went on my first machine, it also being the second new computer I had bought for myself. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the story of Novablade.

Circa 2010, I had just enrolled in ETSU and had just settled into my apartment near college. After being quite well-informed that my college courses were tech intensive, my family decided to get a laptop for me to do the work that I needed to do.

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This one is a bit of a short Storytime, but this came back to memory when I started putting together some special content for my own site.

When I had gotten interested in Steampunk in 2009, it didn’t really stick with the people around at the time. However, I had tried to pursue my interest in it, namely in writing. When a cosplay group and that flopped, I decided to bring to light some of other people’s creation. If I couldn’t be a contributor, I could at least be an information hub! I was heavily inspired by a Steampunk-only blog with actual articles, information and promotion for the genre. Sort of like an online newspaper.

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After a long and stressful battle with attempting to get this edited and the delays with no results, I finally am at a point that I believe that I’m happy with it after doing what I should’ve done in the first place, edit it myself. With great joy I’m pleased to announce that The Haunting of Rotherwood was released onto Amazon and Smashwords today, which will filter down to most major retailers in the next couple of days. I’ve also gotten it up on Gumroad, too! I’m overjoyed and relieved that my first solo 20,000+ word fiction piece is finally available for people to read and check out.

I sincerely do regret that this wasn’t ready for you to read around Halloween of last year. At least you now know the story behind my banner image of the two girls around the guy with the lamp. 🙂 Enjoy!

Amazon: http://amzn.com/B01DONGHLK

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/626660

Gumroad: http://gumroad.com/l/mjYG

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I highly debated ever telling this story, even five years after it took place. The people that were involved had long gone their ways, and one of them ended us knowing each other on an extremely sour note.

However, if you take all of that away, it was one of my “adventurous” college moments. It also is one of the most dangerous driving conditions I’ve ever driven through. With all of the snow that’s happened in the last week or so, and having my own taste of winter weather this Sunday, I decided it’s time and okay to share this.

Okay, deep breath. Here goes.

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When the boom of Minecraft’s popularity happened, I was barely exposed to what had happened to keep track of it. I was either out of the loop or not around the gaming scene to remember much. But when it became popular, I realized that it wasn’t just some silly cube game, it was actually something quite remarkable.

Circa 2010, first semester of ETSU. I was in Color Theory class with a few other people. There was this one kid in particular called Coty. He was a bit of a nerd and we talked now and then. I remember that when we weren’t painting, he had his laptop out and would play games.

One week he kept going on about “Minecraft”. He had asked me to borrow $20 to buy it, which I agreed to lend him. He never followed through for me to buy it for him that evening, but when we had Color Theory the next time, he had it out on his laptop, running around and hitting cows. I thought it was rude until he explained that you needed to eat, so you had to kill animals.

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