For those who don’t know, I grew up out in Sidney, Nebraska way out in the Panhandle. Ever since I was a kid out there, I knew I was always a bit different from all the other kids my age. Growing up, I was always more interested in things like Pokemon, computers, and other nerd stuff instead of football and hunting.
With my parents working a lot when two of my three brothers and I were growing up, I was kind of left to my own devices around Sidney. Oftentimes we didn’t have a computer growing up, so most of my going around town was to places like the library or the local community college to get access to a computer. My personal favorite was the community college since they had computers with Visual Studio on them. Nothing blows the mind of an 11 year old quite like MFC and C++. It still blows my mind, mostly because I don’t know really how it works. 😂
You’re probably asking yourself: Didn’t you have any adult supervision? Yes, we did. Unfortunately my paternal grandmother was on oxygen (habitual smoker, like many in my family), so if I wanted to do something I wanted to do I was walking wherever I wanted to go. Because I often walked by myself and was at the library or college by myself, I pretty much had very few people to talk to who had the same interests as me.
Not that everyone should have the same interests as me, but the deification of sports to a Varsity Blues-like level in towns like Sidney along with the internet still growing up made it hard to connect with others and have opportunities to build the social empathy skills that I’m working on as an adult.
In conclusion, if I’m awkward I don’t mean to be as I’m still learning how to connect with people since I never had much of an opportunity growing up. I know I’m not the best at connecting with people, and I’m always trying to improve and be better. Feel free to give me constructive feedback in those scenarios, and I’ll do my best to do better next time. Just don’t ghost me unless I’m really egregious since then I can’t try to make it right.
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