Introduction with some Introspection

Written by Christopher Pentecost on January 7, 2024

“Hi! Welcome. I’m not really good with intros, so here we go. I’m Chris, and I am glad you’re here. Now that that’s out of the way, why are you here? Better question, why am I here? I, at least, have the answer to that. I’m here to do something that I’ve been wanting to do for over 20 years, and I finally got to a point where I can feel like I can express myself coherently. Especially with Google’s talk-to-text function. I can only sit at a keyboard for so many hours: typing out the first words, backspace; typing out the next first words, backspace; typing out the next first words, backspace… you get the idea. I sort of grew up with the inability to be able to write down my thoughts, but I am able to speak them, which can be a little easier thanks to technology.

In full disclosure, as you’re going to read this, I did have to put this through an AI just to put the punctuation in. Not that I wanted to, but the Google dictate function doesn’t really add in punctuation when I stopped talking, so let technology help me, I guess. The bigger question is, why am I doing this? I said I’ve been wanting to do this for 20 years, and this is true. I’ve wanted a creative outlet that I could share my thoughts, my experiences, and I guess after 20 years, I finally have enough experience to hopefully be able to put something out here.

I’m also linking this to my current section of learning, which is learning web development and wanting to, you know, express myself somehow where people can take what they want from it while also building on skills that I would need to have a job. It’s an interesting situation I’m in, and I’m, you know, looking forward to this: writing this, sharing this, being a part, you know, of hopefully a larger conversation. That’s if it goes anywhere. As I said, for 20 years, I’ve been wanting to do something creative, and this is going to be it. To be fair, it’s going to be a learning journey for me and maybe a learning journey for someone else. We never know; all we can do is do something and put it out there, and that’s what I choose. I’m choosing to do so.

What is this blog going to be about? Well, even I can’t tell you that specifically. I, after much research and much discussion, I’ve never been diagnosed with ADHD, mainly because I think there was a larger stigma back when I grew up in the ’80s, and that people just, you know, thought I was lazy, thought I just didn’t want to exert myself in the right way, which, even by doing this, this way, is being able to put words to paper that I don’t have to write myself because a lot of the times, my brain just didn’t want to let me.

So, I’ve grown up this way. I’m awkward at parties, but once I become comfortable, I can carry a good conversation on as well as the next person. I am, as one time, a group of friends told me, eccentric, which sort of made me feel good, made me relate to all the wonderful characters I had grown up with, some like Lydia Deeds or the Losers Club or for some of our younger readers, maybe the Hellfire Club from Stranger Things. I always felt like I was an outsider, and sometimes that was just feeling like I would watch myself from inside my own head to say I belonged or felt like I belonged. Not really, but spending a lot of time by myself, sort of as a Gen X latchkey kid, you know, you can only do so much and learn so much from the Encyclopedia Britannica that was on your father’s shelf and from the library once I was able to get across the street like in around age 8. I really enjoyed sort of being on my own. Not sure if that really helped my socialization; what can you do?

There are a few things that I share in common with a lot of other people: my love of music, my love of art, my love of political discussions, social discussions, logic, pop culture, and just those random, useless lines from a movie that make all the kids 20 years younger than me go, ‘What?’ And if that ever happens to you, you have homework.

What do I want from this blog? Well, ultimately, to get a lot of the words out of my head, to share stories, experiences, things from my past that may help other people. I have dealt with a lot of internal struggle, a lot of external issues, but I think I’ve relatively turned out well, and I just hope that, you know, if people either find humor in it or information or just some sort of comfort that one is not alone in the world and that there are people who are just like me, standing alone in the basement, talking to themselves. You’re not that weird because I don’t think I’m that weird, but that’s just me.

There’s a lot of things I want to share, want to be creative, and want to explore. In most of the ‘how do you start a blog’ you know, professional YouTube videos out there, they always say have a single subject you want to talk about and talk about that over many different posts. I can’t, mainly because my brain will not allow me to do so. I have too many passions and feelings to things and not enough gumption just to settle on one. So, like I said a few lines above, I’m going to talk about a lot of things: being the latchkey kid, being a kid who is bullied and spent a lot of time alone in his parents’ basement, being a person that surrounded themselves with music and literature as a way to cope with the everyday struggles of just being human, dealing with an overprotected mother who was also a part of the Boomer parents that raised me, and to give perspective as to how I see the world and how I can try to better fit in it. “Change is inevitable”; those who cannot change ride out the same life that they have always done. This is me trying to exact change within myself. Hopefully, this turns into more of a conversation and not just me rambling. You can laugh at that.

I do look forward to making sure that each of the next posts that I do, yes, will stick to one theme, but let’s also know that not everything is ever contained in a singular bubble. Those bubbles have to share spaces with other ones, so this is now just becoming one massive Venn diagram. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make it make sense, well, also use AI to continuously put better punctuation in. It’s going, if I’m going to learn from it, it’s going to learn. AI is going to learn from it.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. If you haven’t, thanks for coming anyway, and I look forward to seeing or at least hoping other people’s eyes will touch on this or e-readers. I do know a few people with vision issues wonder what I’m going to sound like as an AI-generated voice. There’s that ADHD again.”

[Photo by Charlota Blunarova on Unsplash ]