Born pouting on the first day of fall, I was doomed from day one to be a brooding, contemplative type. Fortunately, I believe I've developed something approximating a sense of humor to offset this. After experiencing my first videogame, Super Mario Brothers, at age four, my mind was pretty much molded for life, with a string of videogames and videogame systems defining my childhood. A social outcast in the later grades of elementary school, this combined with a home-schooled education through junior high turned me into a total introvert, a trait that I still carry, despite social skills that are workable, if prone to moments of stupidity. Fortunately, the brooding, contemplative type finally got its outlet with the move to home-schooling, as a computer keyboard actually allowed me to write. Up until that point, I had actually disliked writing, as it involved tedious repetition of drawing numerous letters in succession. A lot of bad poetry and some slightly less bad essays later, I found a teacher that somehow saw something in that mess, and lo and behold, actually cared. She would go on to become a life-long friend, and one of the major reasons that I managed to turn some talent into a degree of competence. Though my path as a writer seemed set, I had no idea what kind of writer I was supposed to be. After entering a contest called Developer for a Day on a whim, I realized that other design documents in the contest were far more properly envisioned, realistic and detailed than mine. In the midst of my aggressive attempts at improving my design documents, I had a sudden epiphany, literally moments after telling someone that I wasn't going to be a game designer, that I was going to be a game designer. I've continued to develop my documents, my theories about videogames and my storytelling ability in general, to the point where I felt reasonably comfortable in my abilities in those area. This confidence was promptly shattered after I flunked out of a college writing program and failed to make the fifth edition of Developer for a Day just before and just after the new year, respectively. Much depression and aimlessness followed. Since then, I've quietly gone about trying to reconstruct my life. And some good things have happened, but at this stage, I'm essentially waiting for the next bit of the plot to unfold.