Welcome to this big wide nerdy world!

AKA, I finally step through the Substack author portal

The first post can often set the standard to how the rest of the place runs. We could find out just as easily in the next few posts that notion could fall apart on its head altogether. One thing’s for sure – you’re coming on this journey with me and I hope that it’s a good time for all of us.

I’ll be frank – I started this Substack on my 32nd ½ birthday and my 10 ½ year anniversary of doing YouTube. I had every intention of celebrating that milestone with the first post I’ve done on a blog in nearly half a decade (you can still find my past sites if you’re curious – MessagesByTanders and Mahou Kunoichi). But when I sat down to write, I felt something that I thought I put aside a long time ago: Intimidation. Very surprising after all this time of being online and doing a lot of academic stuff.

I didn’t know how to start because it feels like to appease the cosmic mystery that is the algorithm and the nebulous world we live in, there seems to be a demand for silence, for niching, to stay in a small box and not pop out unless asked (if ever). I’ve shuffled around several boxes – nerd culture, the arts, science, spirituality, to name a few that I can verbalize. I’ve tried so hard to stay in them. Ever since the lockdown, I’ve tried to craft a new box that I’d most likely like and stay in. I’ve even been in a recent internal tug of war – the call to simplify myself on one hand and keep my intellectual word play on the other. (There’s even a video on this on my YT channel if you’re curious and given the tone of this page, it’s pretty obvious what I chose.) But I just couldn’t figure out what design I liked even among the boxes I already knew I could exist happily in… until I realized that the problem wasn’t me or the box. The box and I just needed to unfold and I had to just let myself dance on top of the flat cardboard and let the cardboard be used for something else (like a dance floor). I guess to take it to the obvious level, there is no box.

The dance for me has been figuring how the method of emerging from the comfy shelter of silence while figuring out how to hold the mic and get the message out. I hope through writing these words and the words to come, I grasp at the answers – yes, answers because there can be more than one answer to some questions.

So I did the opposite of what most creative advisors tend to say – I sat, meditated, and waited for the muse come my way. Let me be clear – I wasn’t doing completely nothing. I still worked, self-reflected, journaled, and did my usual tasks. After all the fuel has to come from somewhere!

Let’s call this new chapter “an unfolding of the petals”. Rather than the traditional name, title, and topic, you’ll get to know me by what I tell. Each post you’ll gradually get to know me and my adventures (at least as much as you can know in a parasocial environment). My hope is that this space is a chance to get to know ourselves and each other within and beyond the confines of the stories we always construct.

May you and I be free and may we encourage others to remember their innate freedom because it is natural state of being. May we have interesting dialogue with each other. May we recognize our mutual humanity. Most importantly, as I’ve said a lot in my streams ever since Kingdom Hearts 3 came out - may your heart be your guiding key.

Welcome to the Phoenix Lotus Galaxy Kingdom, my friends.