About
“Everybody knows what's going on with the world – I don't even know what's going on in myself.”
-Johnson, Matt. The The. “Slow Emotion Replay.” Dusk. Sony, 1993.
Yo, my name is Forrest—yes, that's my real name, two R's and all.
I was once described as “impressively antisocial” and “one of the many talented (and perhaps frustrated) writers out there who is also an alcoholic—or at risk of becoming one” (note that I am teetotal as of June 2024, mostly just to spite the guy who said that). But most importantly, I'm an aspiring essayist and I'm the creator/admin of howdoyouspell.cool and I hate writing quaint little bios about myself and I keep a long list of all my favorite songs right here (in case you were wondering).
I have a strong interest in writing, philosophy, music, fiction, and certain video games; and when I write about these things, I try to mix them with my personal life and/or whatever ethical quandary I happen to be thinking about at the time, to varying degrees of success (usually none, zero success). Also, I hardly ever make qualitative judgments about the things I write about (e.g., reviews or “four out of five stars!” &c.), as I firmly believe that quality is immeasurable without a standard by which to measure it and that everyone's standards are different.
If I had to describe my writing style, I would call it “brutal sincerity,” directed at both myself and the systems around me, to cut through the weeds, to reach the root of myself and all the crazy shit going on around me—which I suspect might be an impossible goal, but I will keep trying anyway.
Note that, while I am totally sincere at the time of writing a piece, my opinions do change quite often. So, what I'm trying to say is, I may not agree with myself from three months ago or even from a few days ago; my personal worldview—while aiming to be consistent—is in a constant state of flux, as it turns out that consistency is a very complicated thing indeed and that opinions/values must occasionally be updated when new evidence/arguments are presented that I cannot contend with using my current worldview. So, while my writing is sometimes very forward and matter-of-fact, this is often just how it comes out, and, in reality, I am often second-guessing and questioning myself. Therefore, if you—the reader—happen to reach out to me, disagreeing with something I've written, don't be surprised if I write back with something like, “you're right” or “I was wrong about that” or “yeah, I'm an idiot” or whatever. You may then ask something like, “If you're updating your values in real time, why not remove old writing or update it?” and I don't do that because I see my writing as artwork of sorts, in that once I “put something out there,” that's it—that was me at a certain point in space and time, and whether I happen to agree or disagree with it in the present is irrelevant. Nothing I write is perfect, and it never will be. So, while some of my writing may be embarrassing and cringe or just flat-out incorrect, it is part of my evolutionary history as a writer, thus it will remain up with all its imperfections—for posterity, if nothing else.
Anyway.
Regardless of whatever series of events led you here, I'm flattered that you were curious enough to click into this About Me at all. The bad news, however, is that there's not much here; you won't learn the contents of my soul from an About Me page. It's simply not possible to condense anyone's essence into a couple of paragraphs in a blog post. So, if you really want to know the contents of my soul, then you're going to have to read everything here—but it still won't be enough to truly know me, because how could you truly know me when I still haven't figured out myself?
HOW TO FOLLOW?
You can keep up with me on your RSS reader of choice by adding this feed link: https://howdoyouspell.cool/forrest/feed/
Some guy (not me!!!) runs a Substack mirror of my work, which you can subscribe to by following this link.
on computer games
on computer games was a gaming blog where I published analyses, short stories, musings, and essays on the highly subjective experience of computer games; all presented in a style reminiscent of “creative writing” covering a range of topics such as philosophy, social issues, nostalgia, and tanuki lore.
I have since republished everything from on computer games to this site, so it now exists as an archive of my early gaming essays.
GAMING PUBLICATIONS:
I wrote, edited, designed, and published an online magazine under the on computer games moniker, both issues are free to download/print by following the links below.
OCGM#2 – Delving Digital Voids
If you happened to read through all this – get yourself checked out, it could be contagious.
(Disclaimer/note: in my non-fiction essays, nearly all instances of the pronoun “you” refer to myself, not you—the reader—unless specifically notated otherwise [typically in the same way as just 11 words ago: you em-dash the reader em-dash].)
Again, get yourself checked out.
