It was a brisk fall American afternoon in 1998; Smogon was yet to be a mere afterthought in Chaos's adolescent head. The northeastern leaves took their plunge down to the Earth's surface while the gulf's winds took their own plunge on the Mississippi coast, engulfing countless communities in their own chaos. As Hurricane George's infancy graduated into a reckless childhood, the southeastern region of the United States had to brace for gigantic impact. They did just that after seeing what had happened to prior regions affected by the hurricane. After days of wreckage that felt like an entire lifetime for those impacted, the region came together to make the most of their collective situations. Relief efforts turned into success stories, broken communities found reasons to hope for a realistic future that may resemble preconceived normalcy, and the positives of collective action were highlighted when needed most.
Simultaneously, individuals nationwide had to brace for impact in an entirely novel fashion. Something disruptive and Earth shattering in a much more juvenile and less threatening fashion was born into American society on the same exact day. Something that you can make fun of for being childish, but still respect deep down with unrelenting appreciation. Something that will try harder and harder to make an impact on those around it in society no matter the barriers or cultural shifts it may encounter began its journey forward at that exact instant.
On September 29th of 1998, I was born. Of course, I am not the subject of the above description. Do you guys really think I assign that much importance to myself? Never would I ever overhype myself or seek unnecessary attention, don't be silly! Shifting back on topic: On September 28th, 1998, the same day as the aforementioned Hurricane and the subject of the above description, Pokemon Red and Blue were released in the United States. Games that began bringing together countless communities in joy and camaraderie introduced themselves to us all. The commencement of Pokemon's entertainment dynasty in America was the day before I was born. Naturally, I played the games from a very young age through the generations and eventually found my way into the Pokemon scene through that, right? Wrong. My journey into Pokemonaddiction at a deeper level will be outlined in the HIDE tags below. In the following HIDE tags, I will discuss some things about me IRL. You can read them if you are interested, but I will be surprised if anyone actually reads through all of my nonsense tbh. Feel free to ask any questions you would like in posts below and I will respond when I can! I hope you all have a great day and stay safe.
Pokemon
IRL
Simultaneously, individuals nationwide had to brace for impact in an entirely novel fashion. Something disruptive and Earth shattering in a much more juvenile and less threatening fashion was born into American society on the same exact day. Something that you can make fun of for being childish, but still respect deep down with unrelenting appreciation. Something that will try harder and harder to make an impact on those around it in society no matter the barriers or cultural shifts it may encounter began its journey forward at that exact instant.
On September 29th of 1998, I was born. Of course, I am not the subject of the above description. Do you guys really think I assign that much importance to myself? Never would I ever overhype myself or seek unnecessary attention, don't be silly! Shifting back on topic: On September 28th, 1998, the same day as the aforementioned Hurricane and the subject of the above description, Pokemon Red and Blue were released in the United States. Games that began bringing together countless communities in joy and camaraderie introduced themselves to us all. The commencement of Pokemon's entertainment dynasty in America was the day before I was born. Naturally, I played the games from a very young age through the generations and eventually found my way into the Pokemon scene through that, right? Wrong. My journey into Pokemon
Pokemon
I was born into a generation of Pokemon fanatics; back in my first years of school, Pokemon cards were so popular that they eventually got banned when kids started trading them and the children at the top of the social ladder began collecting everything over time. Parents complained that their children lost cards over time to specific other children and it created a mess large enough for my own parents to discourage anything Pokemon related for a year or so. I remember being upset over this because I wanted a Pokemon game for the holidays that year. I settled for the then-trendy Wii, which had just come out. Ultimately, I did not touch Pokemon games until after generation 4 was released in the United States at the age of 9 or 10; I had cards for some months prior at least as my parents relented, but even that was well behind the curve.
Upon inserting my brand new Pokemon Pearl cartridge into my beloved DS for the first time, I was hooked to an extent that a young Finch could not possibly put into words. I logged in more hours to Pokemon Pearl back in the coming months than I log into Smogon nowadays, which says a lot considering I know many of you are tired of seeing Harry Styles's album cover invade each-and-every Smogon thread for months with no end in sight whatsoever. Needless to say, I grinded my way through the game, eventually finding my way past Cynthia's infamous Garchomp after more tries than I am willing to admit well over ten years after the fact. What is worth saying is the level of stimulation I experienced throughout the process. The sheer elation I experienced when my Prinplup became an Empoleon was perhaps my favorite moment from the whole journey, but to this day I can remember numerous highlights that are lifelong joyful memories at this point.
As my experiences with Pokemon Pearl came to a close, I went backwards to generation three, managing to play through Emerald and Fire Red without much trouble. The remaining generation 4 games eventually came out and those were more of the same, but something about Soul Silver's 2 region format was especially appealing to me. When I grinded up my Pokemon well into their 80s for the first time since I got my Empoleon all the way to level 100, I felt so accomplished. Little did I know: I would be playing with level 100s on the internet for the next 10 years to come.
How did that end up happening? As I was playing through Black 1 for the first time ever, I felt a bit rusty due to taking a few months off of Pokemon games prior -- which turns out to be my most recent break from anything Pokemon related up to date. Yes, I have not taken a break of any kind since early 2011. ANYWAY, I decided that being the super cool 12 year old I was, I would use my iPod touch to search for YouTube videos to help me through the game and also to learn some new tricks that I could teach my friends at school during the following week. While I did find the information I needed to proceed in the game, I also found this Canadian YouTuber called Slowflake.
Slowflake made videos where he played through the games and commented along the way, also known as Let's Plays. Many YouTubers do Let's Plays of games that interest them and their viewers, but Slowflake caught my attention due to his unique narration style. While he played through the games, he paid a lot of attention to detail, which appealed to me greatly as the roots of my meticulous nature and overall tryhardery that I show off on a day-to-day basis on here were forming back then. Of course, paying so much attention to detail leads to lots of time being spent and whenever he was not playing through a major plot event, he took the opportunity to discuss his gaming interests as a whole. One of these interests was competitive Pokemon, with specific mentions of Smogon.
Up to this point, I did not know what Smogon was and I was unaware of the world of competitive Pokemon. After hearing him talk about it in older videos that I eagerly binge-watched through after school each day and more recent videos discussing the early generation 5 suspects, I knew that I had to try my hand at competitive Pokemon. First, I tried to EV train random Pokemon in my Black 1 game, but I realized this would be futile without proper Wi-Fi set-up, IV training, the right natures, specific movesets, and actual knowledge of the competitive game. Sure enough, I pulled out my handy-dandy iPad touch once again and found Smogon articles outlining the metagame and specific Pokemon. They helped me learn, but also introduced me to Pokemon Online.
Pokemon Online at first was super new to me and I thought it would just help me learn so I could become a competent Wi-Fi battler. However, it soon became clear that Pokemon Online and the Smogon community was the place to be rather than on Wi-Fi, so I never actually looked back. I remember in the early days I thought I was the master of prediction by clicking Hidden Power Ice with my Zapdos against opposing Water types as the opponent went into their Landorus-I or Gliscor; every single day after school I grinded through games and tried to pull off as many sick predictions as I could. While my ability to optimize gameplans and actually win games was shaky at best, I viewed the concept of predicting the opponent like some attribute in a Sports video game where you could be ranked on a 1-99 scale and I wanted to be at the 99 so it seemed like I was always in my opponent's head. It was mad cheesy and even impractical at times, but something about that really drew me in even more over time.
After weeks of playing, I became a formidable ladder player and eventually met some people who also stuck with the community. Some of my earlier memories come from playing against people who have been or still are "relevant" on Smogon such as blunder, Cased, Moet, meeps, Problems, Bugzinator, GaryTheGengar, gr8astard, Omfuga, ZoroDark, Afro Smash, and likely a number of others I am forgetting. Over time, I became an active member of the Pokemon Online community and kept getting better at the game, even working my way to lower tiers. Of course, I started when I was below 13 and COPPA was a thing, so I had to lie about my age and because I wanted to be cool, I told everyone I was 22. This charade lasted for well over a year as I made dozens of friends and became a staple in that community despite acting like a child on a regular basis. Most people close to me know this story, but honestly there are so many funny things I got away with and so few people called me on it. Ironically enough, I told everyone my real age when I won the well on PO back in 2013.
Backtracking a little bit, PO is where I started to really become the Finchinator we all know nowadays honestly. The excessive amounts of effort and socialization, the frequent playing of every relevant format, and the active forum presence all originated there among other things. Anyway, I played in countless smaller tournaments with varying degrees of success. Most notably, I beat a lot of the better players in the Pokemon Online League, which was their watered down version of frontier that included all of the tiers. I eventually got picked in POCL 2013, which was their SPL and actually had a decent playerbase back then. I managed to go 3-2, but my first game I lost in embarrassing fashion to Lavos after throwing a win away and I got banned from the server during the last week of the season, preventing me from playing when my team was in the thick of the playoff race. It was a really dumb ban, too -- my opponent and I both got hit with the hammer over bickering in a ladder game excessively. Unfortunately, we finished in fifth place as I sat on the PokeMexico and Groudon's Grotto servers all week, praying to get another chance. It never came, but suddenly I was motivated to dominate every tournament I could, make a name for myself, and climb up the ranks.
As 2013 came to a close, I became one of the OU Gym Leaders on PO, which was all of the rage for me at that point in time. Eventually I even became a moderator, tier leader, and helped run official tournaments on the site, too. In case I'm not crazy enough on here, I actually have the second most messages and likes on the PO forums, too. As 2013 became 2014, I got even more serious as a player and eventually was one of the better OU players on PO. Later that year, I made a run at SmogonTour playoffs and qualified for the tiebreak. I won the tiebreak with a little help from a timeout and then took McMeghan to 3 games while getting a bit unlucky in the third in the first round. From there on out, I was a regular in the Smogon tournament community. Soon thereafter I became a regular on Smogon as a whole and the rest is history.
I could write a literal novel about my times on Smogon since then. I have made dozens of large contributions to the community, gained hundreds of friends I cherish, played thousands of tournament games I am passionate about, and managed to make you guys click the like button on my posts tens of thousands of times. One day I will formally chronicle my Smogon experiences once my time is closer to coming to a close, but I am nowhere near that time yet and I am sure some of this will be answered in the questions below regardless. With this said, I do want to add a few things before I finish the Pokemon section:
Upon inserting my brand new Pokemon Pearl cartridge into my beloved DS for the first time, I was hooked to an extent that a young Finch could not possibly put into words. I logged in more hours to Pokemon Pearl back in the coming months than I log into Smogon nowadays, which says a lot considering I know many of you are tired of seeing Harry Styles's album cover invade each-and-every Smogon thread for months with no end in sight whatsoever. Needless to say, I grinded my way through the game, eventually finding my way past Cynthia's infamous Garchomp after more tries than I am willing to admit well over ten years after the fact. What is worth saying is the level of stimulation I experienced throughout the process. The sheer elation I experienced when my Prinplup became an Empoleon was perhaps my favorite moment from the whole journey, but to this day I can remember numerous highlights that are lifelong joyful memories at this point.
As my experiences with Pokemon Pearl came to a close, I went backwards to generation three, managing to play through Emerald and Fire Red without much trouble. The remaining generation 4 games eventually came out and those were more of the same, but something about Soul Silver's 2 region format was especially appealing to me. When I grinded up my Pokemon well into their 80s for the first time since I got my Empoleon all the way to level 100, I felt so accomplished. Little did I know: I would be playing with level 100s on the internet for the next 10 years to come.
How did that end up happening? As I was playing through Black 1 for the first time ever, I felt a bit rusty due to taking a few months off of Pokemon games prior -- which turns out to be my most recent break from anything Pokemon related up to date. Yes, I have not taken a break of any kind since early 2011. ANYWAY, I decided that being the super cool 12 year old I was, I would use my iPod touch to search for YouTube videos to help me through the game and also to learn some new tricks that I could teach my friends at school during the following week. While I did find the information I needed to proceed in the game, I also found this Canadian YouTuber called Slowflake.
Slowflake made videos where he played through the games and commented along the way, also known as Let's Plays. Many YouTubers do Let's Plays of games that interest them and their viewers, but Slowflake caught my attention due to his unique narration style. While he played through the games, he paid a lot of attention to detail, which appealed to me greatly as the roots of my meticulous nature and overall tryhardery that I show off on a day-to-day basis on here were forming back then. Of course, paying so much attention to detail leads to lots of time being spent and whenever he was not playing through a major plot event, he took the opportunity to discuss his gaming interests as a whole. One of these interests was competitive Pokemon, with specific mentions of Smogon.
Up to this point, I did not know what Smogon was and I was unaware of the world of competitive Pokemon. After hearing him talk about it in older videos that I eagerly binge-watched through after school each day and more recent videos discussing the early generation 5 suspects, I knew that I had to try my hand at competitive Pokemon. First, I tried to EV train random Pokemon in my Black 1 game, but I realized this would be futile without proper Wi-Fi set-up, IV training, the right natures, specific movesets, and actual knowledge of the competitive game. Sure enough, I pulled out my handy-dandy iPad touch once again and found Smogon articles outlining the metagame and specific Pokemon. They helped me learn, but also introduced me to Pokemon Online.
Pokemon Online at first was super new to me and I thought it would just help me learn so I could become a competent Wi-Fi battler. However, it soon became clear that Pokemon Online and the Smogon community was the place to be rather than on Wi-Fi, so I never actually looked back. I remember in the early days I thought I was the master of prediction by clicking Hidden Power Ice with my Zapdos against opposing Water types as the opponent went into their Landorus-I or Gliscor; every single day after school I grinded through games and tried to pull off as many sick predictions as I could. While my ability to optimize gameplans and actually win games was shaky at best, I viewed the concept of predicting the opponent like some attribute in a Sports video game where you could be ranked on a 1-99 scale and I wanted to be at the 99 so it seemed like I was always in my opponent's head. It was mad cheesy and even impractical at times, but something about that really drew me in even more over time.
After weeks of playing, I became a formidable ladder player and eventually met some people who also stuck with the community. Some of my earlier memories come from playing against people who have been or still are "relevant" on Smogon such as blunder, Cased, Moet, meeps, Problems, Bugzinator, GaryTheGengar, gr8astard, Omfuga, ZoroDark, Afro Smash, and likely a number of others I am forgetting. Over time, I became an active member of the Pokemon Online community and kept getting better at the game, even working my way to lower tiers. Of course, I started when I was below 13 and COPPA was a thing, so I had to lie about my age and because I wanted to be cool, I told everyone I was 22. This charade lasted for well over a year as I made dozens of friends and became a staple in that community despite acting like a child on a regular basis. Most people close to me know this story, but honestly there are so many funny things I got away with and so few people called me on it. Ironically enough, I told everyone my real age when I won the well on PO back in 2013.
Backtracking a little bit, PO is where I started to really become the Finchinator we all know nowadays honestly. The excessive amounts of effort and socialization, the frequent playing of every relevant format, and the active forum presence all originated there among other things. Anyway, I played in countless smaller tournaments with varying degrees of success. Most notably, I beat a lot of the better players in the Pokemon Online League, which was their watered down version of frontier that included all of the tiers. I eventually got picked in POCL 2013, which was their SPL and actually had a decent playerbase back then. I managed to go 3-2, but my first game I lost in embarrassing fashion to Lavos after throwing a win away and I got banned from the server during the last week of the season, preventing me from playing when my team was in the thick of the playoff race. It was a really dumb ban, too -- my opponent and I both got hit with the hammer over bickering in a ladder game excessively. Unfortunately, we finished in fifth place as I sat on the PokeMexico and Groudon's Grotto servers all week, praying to get another chance. It never came, but suddenly I was motivated to dominate every tournament I could, make a name for myself, and climb up the ranks.
As 2013 came to a close, I became one of the OU Gym Leaders on PO, which was all of the rage for me at that point in time. Eventually I even became a moderator, tier leader, and helped run official tournaments on the site, too. In case I'm not crazy enough on here, I actually have the second most messages and likes on the PO forums, too. As 2013 became 2014, I got even more serious as a player and eventually was one of the better OU players on PO. Later that year, I made a run at SmogonTour playoffs and qualified for the tiebreak. I won the tiebreak with a little help from a timeout and then took McMeghan to 3 games while getting a bit unlucky in the third in the first round. From there on out, I was a regular in the Smogon tournament community. Soon thereafter I became a regular on Smogon as a whole and the rest is history.
I could write a literal novel about my times on Smogon since then. I have made dozens of large contributions to the community, gained hundreds of friends I cherish, played thousands of tournament games I am passionate about, and managed to make you guys click the like button on my posts tens of thousands of times. One day I will formally chronicle my Smogon experiences once my time is closer to coming to a close, but I am nowhere near that time yet and I am sure some of this will be answered in the questions below regardless. With this said, I do want to add a few things before I finish the Pokemon section:
- I contribute to Smogon because I know there are countless new users out there who deserve the amazing experience I have had with this community. While we all have our faults and Smogon is a far cry from perfect, I would do it over again if I could. I cannot express how appreciative I am of all of my friends on here and all of my experiences on Smogon. I hope that my efforts open the door for many "new Finchinators" with their own niches and passions to spread throughout the community. I know there are some already and this makes me so proud.
- I play the game, specifically in tournaments, to compete. I am a huge competitor and nothing satisfies me more than playing my absolute best and winning. I have lost so many times along the way and may continue to lose on occasion, but the pursuit of winning the final, deciding games and continuing to improve my skills as a player will never stop fascinating me I reckon.
- I am always open to discuss the community, the game, or anything else with anyone. My PMs are always open if you do not want to discuss things here or it is a lengthier/more formal topic, too. Never hesitate to reach out friends.
IRL
I am Josh. I am a 22 year old who lives in New Jersey.
With regards to my studies and professional life, I graduated of Binghamton University earlier this year. I studied Finance, but I cannot say I am a huge fan of Finance or business school as a whole looking back at it. Parts of it were appealing to me, but in the grand scheme of things I was not as interested as I thought I would be. I currently work as a Sales Associate (salesman) at a HVAC company, but I cannot imagine I stay in this position moving forward for too long. I mostly had to settle for the time being due to the pandemic making the job market incredibly unstable. In the future, I will likely look for a job that combines my passion for helping people with my business background in some capacity. If I could do it all over again, I would likely have studied writing or social work as I feel both allow for contributing to society in a fashion that I find very valuable and appealing, but I am still content with my current career trajectory once the world returns to some semblance of normalcy and I either work my way up the ladder or apply for more long-term career options.
With regards to my personal life, the short answer is I have seen better days and I think that applies to most of us after this year. I'll explain more in the HIDE tags below, but you guys don't need to suffer through my 2020 journey when you guys already have your own 2020 journeys. I just hope everyone reading this is safe physically and mentally. Never hesitate to reach out if you need someone to talk to!
With regards to my hobbies, I am always listening to music, I am a passionate creative writer, I frequently follow sports, and I watch a lot of different shows. I will get into all of these in length, but some other things I am passionate about are statistics, traveling, and -- most importantly -- activism for a number of social causes as our society is ridiculously broken.
I posted stuff about music here, but in a year when I am not emotionally unstable in quarantine my teenage girl pop music listening habits can take a backseat to some older rock music or more modern alternative music as well. I am always listening to something or other on Spotify nowadays. As for creative writing, I have a notebook with >100 pages of pretty intimate writing from this year that I currently do not have and am desperately looking for, so I am pretty on edge about that currently. I posted some of my older poetry and run the poetry thread here, but most of this is not reflective of where I am at as a writer nowadays tbh. I do not feel like sharing much of what I write on here due to a lot of it being personal and/or pretty dark, but I do believe more people should try writing, even if it's entirely casual, as it is a very healthy habit. As for sports, I am a huge follower of baseball and football, but I also watch basketball and hockey a fair amount. Yankees / Steelers / Knicks / Rangers are my teams respectively, but I also play fantasy sports a fair amount and gamble on the side ever since the NFL season started, so there's a lot going on for me there. I'm always down to talk sports, so never hesitate to hmu. Finally, I watch pretty much all of the basic sitcoms: New Girl, Friends, Brooklyn 99, The Good Place, Atypical, Parks and Recreation, Sex Education, The Office, The End of the Fucking World, Stranger Things (yes, I really am that basic), and Big Mouth are some of the shows I have watched over the last couple of years, but honestly this list is missing some because I binge watched a ton when I was in college. I also enjoy a number of comedians and sports documentaries, too.
With regards to my studies and professional life, I graduated of Binghamton University earlier this year. I studied Finance, but I cannot say I am a huge fan of Finance or business school as a whole looking back at it. Parts of it were appealing to me, but in the grand scheme of things I was not as interested as I thought I would be. I currently work as a Sales Associate (salesman) at a HVAC company, but I cannot imagine I stay in this position moving forward for too long. I mostly had to settle for the time being due to the pandemic making the job market incredibly unstable. In the future, I will likely look for a job that combines my passion for helping people with my business background in some capacity. If I could do it all over again, I would likely have studied writing or social work as I feel both allow for contributing to society in a fashion that I find very valuable and appealing, but I am still content with my current career trajectory once the world returns to some semblance of normalcy and I either work my way up the ladder or apply for more long-term career options.
With regards to my personal life, the short answer is I have seen better days and I think that applies to most of us after this year. I'll explain more in the HIDE tags below, but you guys don't need to suffer through my 2020 journey when you guys already have your own 2020 journeys. I just hope everyone reading this is safe physically and mentally. Never hesitate to reach out if you need someone to talk to!
I am a very social person, which shows plenty on here. I am quick to crack a joke when the situation calls for it and I am around my friends/acquaintances, but I am also very quick to take heavier situations seriously and make sure everything is handled -- I can go from 0 to 100 pretty quickly. Unfortunately with how life has been going over the last couple of years, I deal with a lot of stress on a daily basis due to various IRL circumstances I do not feel like commenting on right now and even stuff on here sometimes, but I do not view this as a bad thing at all. I find that with age and more experiences with things I am less comfortable with/oftentimes stressed out by, I grow less fearful of what is to come and more ready for whatever life throws at me. I'm not scared of much anymore, which is pretty cool considering I was pretty sheltered for the first 15-16 years of my life, coming into later HS/college days scared of so many things. The best thing is that I still find myself learning so much about different groups of people and circumstances they may face routinely. I am happy to be growing into a more understanding and prepared person -- I actually really love myself and I could not have said that honestly a while back, but it is still not always easy and this gets me down sometimes as I realize things that do not seem right to me that I can only do so much to change.
Moving on, over the last year or two, life has thrown a lot my way. I average 4-5 hours of sleep a night during the week due to stress induced insomnia and honestly my body has adjusted to simply needing less sleep. I guess some of you guys have noticed based off of my forum activity, so shoutout to the people who always PM me asking why I am still awake and why I never log off! Yes, this is said in the most passive-aggressive tone ever, by the way. This started last year and nobody has any clue if/when it will go away, so this is a lot for me as is. That aside, I used to see friends often in order to have people to interact with and just engage in fun group activities, but now they're mostly far away either still at school or starting their careers elsewhere and between that and the pandemic, so it has been an interesting adjustment period. Work has helped as I am able to interact with people, but obviously it is not entirely the same. This dynamic has not been great for my mental to say the least, but I have been just focusing on the positives and finding a silver lining to every situation instead of dwelling on the obvious negatives. It's cool to have a job and handle so many different responsibilities to say the least.
Moving on, over the last year or two, life has thrown a lot my way. I average 4-5 hours of sleep a night during the week due to stress induced insomnia and honestly my body has adjusted to simply needing less sleep. I guess some of you guys have noticed based off of my forum activity, so shoutout to the people who always PM me asking why I am still awake and why I never log off! Yes, this is said in the most passive-aggressive tone ever, by the way. This started last year and nobody has any clue if/when it will go away, so this is a lot for me as is. That aside, I used to see friends often in order to have people to interact with and just engage in fun group activities, but now they're mostly far away either still at school or starting their careers elsewhere and between that and the pandemic, so it has been an interesting adjustment period. Work has helped as I am able to interact with people, but obviously it is not entirely the same. This dynamic has not been great for my mental to say the least, but I have been just focusing on the positives and finding a silver lining to every situation instead of dwelling on the obvious negatives. It's cool to have a job and handle so many different responsibilities to say the least.
With regards to my hobbies, I am always listening to music, I am a passionate creative writer, I frequently follow sports, and I watch a lot of different shows. I will get into all of these in length, but some other things I am passionate about are statistics, traveling, and -- most importantly -- activism for a number of social causes as our society is ridiculously broken.
I posted stuff about music here, but in a year when I am not emotionally unstable in quarantine my teenage girl pop music listening habits can take a backseat to some older rock music or more modern alternative music as well. I am always listening to something or other on Spotify nowadays. As for creative writing, I have a notebook with >100 pages of pretty intimate writing from this year that I currently do not have and am desperately looking for, so I am pretty on edge about that currently. I posted some of my older poetry and run the poetry thread here, but most of this is not reflective of where I am at as a writer nowadays tbh. I do not feel like sharing much of what I write on here due to a lot of it being personal and/or pretty dark, but I do believe more people should try writing, even if it's entirely casual, as it is a very healthy habit. As for sports, I am a huge follower of baseball and football, but I also watch basketball and hockey a fair amount. Yankees / Steelers / Knicks / Rangers are my teams respectively, but I also play fantasy sports a fair amount and gamble on the side ever since the NFL season started, so there's a lot going on for me there. I'm always down to talk sports, so never hesitate to hmu. Finally, I watch pretty much all of the basic sitcoms: New Girl, Friends, Brooklyn 99, The Good Place, Atypical, Parks and Recreation, Sex Education, The Office, The End of the Fucking World, Stranger Things (yes, I really am that basic), and Big Mouth are some of the shows I have watched over the last couple of years, but honestly this list is missing some because I binge watched a ton when I was in college. I also enjoy a number of comedians and sports documentaries, too.
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