Sodium Reactor

This isn't significant. This is not a grand journey. This is not the first step of some monumental undertaking that will change me or the world around me. I've already grown out of my shonen phase; by the time I was old enough to recognize myself as a bright-eyed protagonist ready to fight evil and save the world I was already too old to be one.

This is not a search for meaning. This is not a cry for help from a man barely keeping his head above his wake, alternatively fighting and accepting the growing realization that his fears and anxieties are subsuming him. By the time I was old enough to recognize the peaks and pockets of my particular pain they'd already begun receding as I gained proper perspective.

Instead, this is simpler. I like writing. I really fucking like writing.

As surely as my wife sleeps in our big soft bed. As surely as my 3D printer whines softly as it births the next iteration of one of my designs. As surely as my legs ache from a workout and my overbuilt PC pulses and glows with red and light LEDs.

I am a writer. Because I write.

I once wrote poems and lyrics and profound declarations meant to live on pages until your wandering fingers and hungry ears invited them to live in your heart and your brain. I wrote about gnawing, churning senses of less and need and desire because I was trying to fill my own and barring that I wanted you to sit and feel my longing as deeply as I did. I wanted you to help us find a solution.

Now? I'm older. Different. I don't write sins or tragedies. I write fiction and fantasy.

I write martial artists harnessing found families and sharp weapons and elemental powers to right wrongs.

I write spellcasters of all sorts harnessing their powers to become heroes and villains for a world almost like our own.

I write humanity's greatest weapons: cyborg amalgamations of measured magic and designed flesh and engineered steel and their fight against a galaxy full of threats and opportunities and wonders.

I write college students and martial artists discovering their talents alongside their sexualities in a world that's more talented, athletic, curvy, more sexually liberated than ours.

My wife says I fucking write. She likes the vignettes and short stories I feed her more than the books her social circles recommend. I recognize I'm not cynical or prolific enough to become a financially successful writer. I still pay my bills as an engineer doing fascinating work for a mundane client and a questionable cause.

But I write. And I write. And I write. Dear God, do I write.

Writers write. I am a writer too.

This isn't significant. But this isn't insignificant. I'm Salt. I write. It's nice to meet you.

#nonfiction #personal #introduction #amwriting #writer #bio #blog