Geeky Awakening

I've been a geek (or nerd, if you prefer) my entire life. I never had an issue with this. I always accepted that this was who I was and it was who I wanted to be. It wasn't until relatively recently, however, that I "discovered" the broader spectrum of geek culture.

Sure, I played D&D, video games, read sci-fi (or syfy, if you prefer) and fantasy books, etc., but I wasn't directly connected to geek culture, I was just moving on a parallel path. My journey into exploring geek culture started just over a year ago. I was looking for reading material or blogs or something about raising kids (we had an almost two year old and our son was on the way) when I did a search for geek and dad or something like that. I then stumbled upon the Geek Dad blog. I was immediately hooked and began to read it every day. I had found my first connection to the greater geek community, but it didn't stop there...

Through that blog I found their podcast that included regular episodes featuring geeky music. I really enjoyed listening to the podcasts, but I didn't make an effort to find out more about the artists or music. This was partly because I didn't realize at the time how big the scene was or that the information was readily available through quick searches. Nerds and geeks rule the internets, of course our music is going to be easily accessible there.

I was just starting to delve deeper when my son was born. I remained in a far orbit of the geek community for a long time during the first few months of his life. I didn't venture further inside, nor did I drift out of it to my prior state.

After a few months, things settled in my house and I got more free time (aka sleep). Also, I began to travel for work again, so I had more time to surf the net and listen to podcasts. That's when I started listening to Radio Free Hipster. Z, the geeky personality behind the podcast, introduced me to a lot more music that is right up my alley. Also, through Z's blog "Hipster, Please" and a few other blogs and websites that I found, I am getting more into the greater geek culture.

I discovered (or was led to) geeky icons like Jonathan Coulton, Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, MC Frontalot, and a lot more. Of course I knew of Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage before my geeky awakening, but I hadn’t read much about them and didn’t know about wootstock either.

A couple of months ago I picked up a RSS reader, FeedDemon, which has helped me keep up with all of the websites that I am now fond of visiting. I've also often considered joining Twitter since a lot of my geeky idols are on there, but I can't bring myself to pull the trigger on that one.

My new affinity to the greater geek culture has led me to a dilemma of sorts. I've always known about PAX and Comic-con and other geeky gatherings, but the more I read about them from the websites I am now visiting, the more I want to go to them. I haven't been able to work going to any of them into my schedule, but maybe once I'm not regularly traveling, I might be able to work do just that. The problem is that with my travel schedule, I don't get enough time with my family as it is, much less taking a weekend out of that time to do something frivolous, not matter how much fun it might be. Going to PAX this weekend would be awesome, but at this point I don't want to take time away from my family to do that.

I find that I may have reached the pinnacle of my connectedness to geek culture by not going to one of these gatherings, but at this point, I can't convince myself to spend the time and money to travel out to something. If only there was a big convention like that in Minneapolis coming up soon! I've also read about people like me putting together small geeky conventions, such as Nerdapalooza, but I don't have the resources or time to do that, much less the connections or anything to get something like that going.

So, that’s the story of my geeky awakening. I feel like I identify more with the greater geeky community, which is good, but I also feel like I might be missing out on a lot of fun by skipping the awesome sounding events occurring around the country.

And, like always, I will be sharing my favorite song of the moment: The Grammar Club – Balloon Flight. The reason that I do this is to possibly introduce you to a song or artist you may not have heard before. I encourage you all to do a quick google search or youtube search for these songs/artists. You might like what you hear.