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NaBloPoMo: Who Am I?
Nov. 2nd, 2012 12:27 amI've decided to do NaBloPoMo — National Blog Post Month; though just like NaNoWriMo it's not actually just 'National' any more — because I wanna blog more, and because I have no intention of doing NaNoWriMo ever. Because of my tendency to be a nightowl, I'm going to apply my usual internal stricture as to when the new day starts; at the first of 'dawn' or 'me waking up', thus if this goes out at half midnight or two in the morning, it's still the first day's blogpost.
So, as a starting point, I've decided to talk about myself. Sure, a lot of people are going to know a lot of this already, but there are probably some people who know relatively little about my background, and I'm guessing most people reading this will learn something new from this.
I am a nearly-thirty geek who lives and works in London. I work for Unlock Democracy, a not-for-profit organisation that campaigns to improve the democratic functioning of the UK. Outside of that, my spare time is spread between
In terms of my past… I am born the son of two academics (who were both married when they met), I was raised first in London, then in Hereford, pre-university education split roughly equally between private and state schools, then six years in Devon at university, first studying Economics then Graphic Design. Then I moved to London, was unemployed for a couple of years, a traffic warden for about five or six months, unemployed for another year or so, then I got involved in the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign of the AV Referendum.
I started off in Y2FV as a volunteer, then became a volunteer-organising volunteers (as I had lots of time due to being unemployed and lived 15 minutes from one of the places they were using; Unlock Democracy's offices). Around Christmas of 2010 I became employed by the campaign, initially to help set up a new phonebank, but later switched to data stuff (as far as I can tell, due to my mastery of the strange and forbidden lore that is the 'sort data' function in Excel). The campaign ended, we won where I'd worked, but lost overall.
I then did a mix of some paid but mostly volunteering work at Unlock Democracy for the next seven months, when the Membership Officer position came up, I applied for the job and got it, and have been doing that since the start of this year.
Having been worried a couple of years ago that I had no idea what I wanted to do, that I was getting older without anything in the way of long term employment on my CV, and generally feeling unsettled, I'm now working at a job I find interesting and am good at, working with people I get on well with, and better still, consider good friends, and am doing nicely financially, enjoying myself with my pastimes, and generally feeling that life is good.
Which is nice.
So, as a starting point, I've decided to talk about myself. Sure, a lot of people are going to know a lot of this already, but there are probably some people who know relatively little about my background, and I'm guessing most people reading this will learn something new from this.
I am a nearly-thirty geek who lives and works in London. I work for Unlock Democracy, a not-for-profit organisation that campaigns to improve the democratic functioning of the UK. Outside of that, my spare time is spread between
- sleeping (never enough)
- various LARPS; at the moment primarily those 'fest LARPS' run by Profound Decisions; I like the fest LARP scale and the significantly player-driven of PDs events.
- Tabletop roleplaying; my preferences run mostly towards the White Wolf roleplaying games, especially Exalted. I'm currently playing in a game where it's Exalts in the Dark Ages, plus a couple of online Exalted games, and one Pathfinder game.
- Chatting with friends; if I'm sitting in front of a computer (which I am a rather large proportion of my time) and it's connected to the internet, chances are I'm on about half a dozen IRC channels. I don't pay constant attention to them, but it's nice to be able to have back and forth conversations whenever, over days, weeks, years.
- Looking for interesting new things; new input/stimuli/information is something I enjoy. Part of the reason I do my linkposts is sharing that stuff with people provides another incentive for me to go looking for it, which I enjoy doing.
In terms of my past… I am born the son of two academics (who were both married when they met), I was raised first in London, then in Hereford, pre-university education split roughly equally between private and state schools, then six years in Devon at university, first studying Economics then Graphic Design. Then I moved to London, was unemployed for a couple of years, a traffic warden for about five or six months, unemployed for another year or so, then I got involved in the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign of the AV Referendum.
I started off in Y2FV as a volunteer, then became a volunteer-organising volunteers (as I had lots of time due to being unemployed and lived 15 minutes from one of the places they were using; Unlock Democracy's offices). Around Christmas of 2010 I became employed by the campaign, initially to help set up a new phonebank, but later switched to data stuff (as far as I can tell, due to my mastery of the strange and forbidden lore that is the 'sort data' function in Excel). The campaign ended, we won where I'd worked, but lost overall.
I then did a mix of some paid but mostly volunteering work at Unlock Democracy for the next seven months, when the Membership Officer position came up, I applied for the job and got it, and have been doing that since the start of this year.
Having been worried a couple of years ago that I had no idea what I wanted to do, that I was getting older without anything in the way of long term employment on my CV, and generally feeling unsettled, I'm now working at a job I find interesting and am good at, working with people I get on well with, and better still, consider good friends, and am doing nicely financially, enjoying myself with my pastimes, and generally feeling that life is good.
Which is nice.
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