The Lore
Warning: Lore contents are PG-13 and contains sensitive material to those with mental health struggles.
Key:
L – Life Overview E – Education S – Scouting M – Mental F – Fundamentals
- L
- The start of it all. Born on December 8, 2001 in New York. Around 5 years old I moved to Manhattan KS and have lived here since. Went to Woodrow Wilson for my K-6 education and Dwight D Eisenhower for middle school years 7-8. While these years were of course my foundation, I often refer to them as non-canon. I wasn’t highly conscious for most of this origin period and most of my current projects are based around more recent events.
- E
- Ever since Kindergarten, I’ve loved science. Around this age my first real science dream was to become an aerospace engineer. But, things changed later in life when I discovered my true passion: Biology.
- S
- Since First grade tiger cub scout days, I’ve been doing scouting yearly. I went through the cub ranks and eventually joined Troop 223 in 5th grade.
- M
- An introduction to my *trauma* High Functioning Autism diagnosis. Since those young kindergarten days, I was great at science and math, but terrible at making friends. Social anxiety, This condition has affected every part of my life and will be referenced more in the Lore. For more details on the condition, view here:
- L
- Starting Highschool, it was time to truly start my educational career. Tired of boring and unchallenging courses, I was excited to truly start difficult courses for college prep. On the other end of the coin, my mental health struggled to keep up with my ambitions. I often refer to these years as the second worst period of my life but was foundational to my academical future.
- E
- Once leaving 8th grade, I still had little direction for my science future. I knew I’d finally get to take some serious sciences courses in high school and wanted to ‘taste test’ as many disciplines as possible.
- S
- Not much to note, climbed through the ranks of Boy Scouts while having amazing summer camp experiences with my Troop. Those scouting years were some of the best memories of my life, climbing the black hills and watching the sunrise on a rock face is a core memory I’ll never forget.
- *M*
- Although excited for my first years of high school and the difficulty advanced courses bring, my mental health truly dipped for the first time in my life in 10th grade. From a number of reasons, low vitamin D, low exercise, low purpose, and social isolation, I fell into a heavy depression. I unfortunately skipped school by laying in bed to giving up on my studies, this was the first mental health battle I fought, including my first and only suicide attempt. After some therapy and vitamin D supplements later, I began to find ways of coping with my emotional health.
- L
- Getting back on my feet from the previous years of struggle, I went all in on my studies. I took AP courses, Biology competitions, and grew my research foundation. I like to refer to this period as my workaholism era, when I first started using work to distract myself from my mental. While originating from a negative place, the results were highly positive as the hard work and consistency truly started repairing my mental. Then COVID hit during my senior year of high school.
- E
- I’m quite proud of my academic achievements, most of which took place in these two years. I took a total of 9 AP courses between these two years for a total of 11 during high school. I competed at the international level for Envirothon, a Biology competition, and I began my research fundamentals with some K-State work. My CV . But this all what happened on the books. My true love of Biology began during these years. Not just Biology though, specifically plant and fungi Ecology. In my favorite Biology competition, Envirothon, I was one of the team’s foresters. The 4 years of study gave me a deep understanding of plant Biology, soon after I started researching fungi. But what fascinates me most is the relationship of these two kingdoms. Plant-Fungi altruism is highly interesting to me, when the right situation happens where supporting others is more efficient than greed. In greater detail, I will discuss this matter more at a future time.
- S
- I became an Eagle Scout! My project was a game called 9 high in the sky built for Woodrow Wilson, the elementary school I attended. While this achievement is something I’m proud of, I actually don’t care much about my Eagle project or the rank itself. Although it might be blasphemous to say this, but I only care about the morals of scouting, not the rules and ranks. To me, a true Eagle scout is one who lives by the moral code of the scout law and oath, nothing more and nothing less. Also, the project and rank are a one-time thing, I believe consistently giving back to scouting is what’s most important. So, with this in mind, I started my first year of Cub Scout Summer Camp Counseling in the summer of 2019 and was the camps director of Ecology. A bit of a spoiler but I’m still teaching Ecology at Camp Brown every summer, known to many as Aspen.
- M
- I described my mental well in the overview, I went all in on my work and was obsessed with grades and college. But something even at the time I knew, I was directionless. Sure, I loved Biology and knew what degrees I wanted to go to college for, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to with those degrees. Numbing workaholism was good for me, it allowed me to focus on finding new healthy coping mechanisms to reduce the workaholism; a catalyst of sorts.
- L
- March 2020, the day where my, and the world’s, life turned 180. My academic progress all came to a halt, all of my Biology competitions were canceled, which devastates me immensely to this day. But, I would soon learn this break was exactly what I needed to grow.
- M
- Above all, for the first time in my life I didn’t have a set path which resulted in a lot of time with my thoughts. For me, this can be very difficult, nihilistic dread, childhood trauma, and other not fun thoughts. Although many painful and stressful months, I began to really think about what I want to do with my life outside of school or work or anything else. These thoughts led me into a deep philosophy phase where I watched, listened, and read philosophical literature. This leads to the fundamentals.
- F
- First, we are all going to die. It is as inevitable as the sun rising, one day all return to the fungi grotto. The long explanation is immense, but the shorter is just as effective as explaining what I learned from this realization. Although the clock ticks, I choose how I spend the limited time I have. That is the only control one has in this life, control of how they react to their environment, control of how one spends their time, and control of doing what they want with their life. For a long time, I’ve struggled against thoughts of self-harm, but it was truly understanding that I can spend my life however I want gave me the power to finally move on. Now, what exactly do I want to do with my life? HAHAHA immense, but the core foundation of my covid philosophy journey is this: I have the power to choose what I do with this life.
- L
- First, I attended college at KU’s honor college and in an odd turn of events, my virtual covid freshman year of college was a pretty decent overall. With my new understandings discussed previously I had the headspace to really focus on my studies and hobbies. I look very fondly on these days, late summer nights gaming turned into a school semester of poetry and calculus turned into next semester of advanced research paper reading and back to summer. Coming up was my sophomore year and it was a substantial event for me: living on my own for the first time. Although this wasn’t an issue by any means, it took a lot of prep and energy to truly pack myself up for the first time, a lot of change for my high functioning autism brain.
- M
- 2020 spring – 2021 summer truly was one of the happiest periods of my life, but now the story shifts. I mentioned late summer gaming nights in the previous section because for years I’ve loved video games. But looking back it was never about the games, it was always about the time spent with my friends online. One of my closest friends Skyler, or Vic his gamertag and nickname, was the friend I had spent the most years gaming with. But it went far past this, the number of hours we spent talking and the conversations would get so depthful, philosophical, and intellectual. It’s always been difficult for me to feel real connection to others, high functioning autism and such, but he was truly one of the closest friends I’ve ever had, if not the most. This is all why his suicide on 7/30/21 is the most painful experience of my life.
- Like I said, we’d have great philosophical conversations. During one of these talks, we discussed how we’re almost Ying and Yang of mentality. I of light and optimism, I dream of a better future. Of him, darkness, consumed by pessimism and nihilism. I tried for a long time to be there for him, to be a light in his life. It took an even longer time after for me to accept there was nothing more I could have done. This is the pain I bear, the suffering that lit my fire. My first tattoo will be a memorial piece seen in the image.
- M
- While early in the summer of 2021 I was excited by my upcoming sophomore year, by the end of July my feelings had changed. Dealing with the grief I had 3 weeks after his passing to be move in ready for my first year of in person college and living on my own for the first time. It was unbelievably stressful, but further this 3 week deadline brought back out my highschool workaholism. In order to survive the new school year, I focused purely on my studies, physical health, and skill development. For me these tasks are numbing distractions I can lose myself in. The first semester went decent but as soon as winter hit, my minor seasonal depression tipped the scale into fullscale workaholism burnout. I mentally gave up and went a full 180. Instead of workaholism and health I could barely make it to class during the second semester. Once summer hit, things got even worse.
- M
- All the burnout spiraled into the summer because the second semester was quite stressful to finish up with. Once finally done, I went all in on numbing myself with bad habits. No more school, no more work, just my thoughts that I numbed. I spent many months like this, in an endless spiral down. Summer into Fall into winter with worsening mental. 2022 was my rock bottom.
- L
- January and February were as rough as 2022, but in March I finally decided to seek therapy, decided to get a job. But eventually, I started to understand that I had a choice: continue down the path I’d been on or get back on track. No therapy can make me want to get better, I have to choose to create the life I want. So, my momentum grew and I started doing what I do best: thinking and planning. If I were to go back to school, one of the issues I ran into during my sophomore year was working a part time job with school. It’s quite difficult to work fast food for 20 hours a week alongside 40+ hours of biochemistry, for me it’s too overwhelming and contributed to the burnout. So, a better strategy would be to develop skills so that I could have a healthier, and more profitable, part time job if I returned to university. So, on April 27th 2023, I decided to pursue website design. I had seen a lot of interesting ads regarding small business website redesign, so I got to work throughout May developing my skills.
- Problem is, finding website design work was a challenge. There’s always sites like Fivver, but competition is high, and I have minimal experience. I originally planned to develop my own agency but the logistics of starting a business can be immense. So, I decided to just focus on the skill development, I knew some opportunity would arise if I became skilled enough. But, in stroke of pure luck, I got in contact with Network Computer Solutions (NCS), an IT company in the Kansas region, and I was offered a job as the business’s digital marketing specialist.
- Now, I write these words in October of 2023 as I officially start my journey as a digital marketer. My personal website portfolio is live, my personal socials, and I have spent months developing my skills to the point I’m ready to truly start marketing. If you’ve read up to this point, Thank you. But, to get the full experience, you must now view the mission. With the context of my origin, my pain, and my rebounding success, it’s finally time to publicly reveal my long term plans. I will endure, I will succeed, and above all my flame will spread.
