Members of the element14 community, I have a confession to make.
I am a nerd.
Of course, this isn't much of a confession if you spend any amount of time with me outside of a professional setting, but I digress. I am a nerd. A geek. A medically confirmed "basement dweller", if the Vitamin D deficiency from some recent blood work is to be believed. But this wasn't always the case. And in celebration of the up-coming "Geek Pride Day", I thought I'd share the story about how this all came about.
Once upon a time, I was an athlete. A fairly good one, judging by the faint memories of gold plastic trophies decorating the mantle in my childhood home. I used to love playing sports, particularly running. Fall was cross country season, spring was track, and I spent my summers as the catcher on my softball team. Though I didn't know it at the time, they were all considered "high impact sports" as far as joints are concerned. And as you can probably guess, this was a lot of pressure on my young, growing body, especially on my knees. I still remember the cross country race when I could hear the person behind me edging closer and I would not let them pass me. Nope. Wasn't happening. I didn't care how much my body hurt, or my lungs burned, I was going to stay ahead of this faceless, nameless person behind me no matter what.
... Until I tore my meniscus. Whoops.
Having to be half-carried off the course was not the victorious finished I had imagined. And as my MRI also discovered, the patella on my right knee is slighter higher than where it should be ("No body is built to spec," - My Doctor), which means I has also developed arthritis to boot."Luckily" for me, conservative treatment was viable - rest, ice, physical therapy and some anti-inflammatory drugs. But sports were out of the question, unless I wanted a knee placement by the time I graduated high school. Since my hubris is what got me into this situation in the first place, I decided this time to listen to my body alongside sound, professional medical advice.
Enter my "new life" as a nerd.
This isn't to say my life had been completely void of "nerd things", especially video games. Credit to having a sibling 10 years older, but we had a gaming system in my household for as long as I can remember (my earliest memories of 'gaming' involved playing Adventures of Lolo with my mom). But it wasn't my thing. Until it was, due to having to abruptly change my day-to-day activities and to entertain myself with the tools at hand.
And I fell in love.
It started with video games, especially Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda. Not only had they just recently released some of their best known titles (Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time, respectively), but it also meant I had a decades worth of a back-catalog titles to play through. And while I was always a good student, I start to read more, beginning with those books grandma had purchased for my Christmas present. At the time, my mom felt compelled to warn me in advance because she wanted to make sure I "acted excited" when I opened them, even though books were not the most exciting of gifts for a teenage girl. Who would've guessed what Harry Potter would become. And what's this "Phantom Menace" thing my dad and older sister as super excited about? Star Wars? Isn't that show with the weird hand thing? No? And to think, nearly two decades later the trailer for The Last Jedi would have me almost crying with excitement, and Slave I and the Millennium Falcon are two prominent display pieces in my apartment.
And my worlds just expanded from there. Cowboy Bebop aired on Adult Swim the same year that The Fellowship of the Rings debuted in theaters. World of Warcraft came a few years later, alongside the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. By the time I graduated high school, nobody remembered "Megan the Athlete". It was "Megan the Nerd". And yes, small town Ohio was not the best place to foster these passions, as my city basically revolved around the High School football team (and the Cleveland Browns, who had actually boasted a winning season in 2007). But by this time the internet had become common place, and most of my friends were to be found online on message boards, where we collective cheered the end of Naruto's filler arcs and the debut of Naruto Shippuden. When people ask how long I've been doing "Community Management", I usually stick to my professional history, though in reality it started with moderating and writing content for gaming websites when I was a teenager (most of which sadly no longer exist).
And then I went to college in Chicago, and things only got better. I found people, real life people who shared my the same interests as me. I now lived in a city where I could go to video game concerts! How cool is that?! A college roommate introduced me to a book series called Game of Thrones. Another argued that Wheel of Time was far superior. Both have become some of my most re-read series, and introduced me to the wonderful Brandon Sanderson to boot. And a decade after I made the transition to the big city? The president of my university's 'anime club' is going to be the maid of honor at my wedding. My fiance? We met at an event I helped host as part of the video game organization. (First known picture of the two of us "together" - he's the blurry guy in the black t-shirt behind me).
So maybe I didn't exactly "choose" to become a geek, nerdy, "otaku", but I'm glad it chose me. Maybe I can't be a long-distance runner, but I can be a Holy Paladin, or a Mandalorian, or Planeswalker, or... well, you get the point. And hey! If I had to pick a time to do lasting harm to my body, forcing myself to find new hobbies and passions, at least I can say with confidence I picked a damn good time to do it.