When Worlds Collide

This idea for a blog grew out of a number of events that happened to me this past weekend. It inspired the title, as well as the general theme for this first post. The first post of a new blog probably necessitates talking about "me" a bit more than I would necessarily like to going forward, in order to lay out some general goals I have for this experiment.

First things first: I'm a geek. You could probably insert nerd here as well, as I tend to use the terms interchangeably, despite what others think of what constitutes a geek versus a nerd. I'm a computer geek, a gaming geek, and a scifi geek, amongst other things. Which is why it is natural that I found myself at PAX East this weekend in my favorite city, Boston. You would probably be hard-pressed to find a better place to encounter so many facets of geek culture than at that convention.

I want to talk a bit more about some of the things I encountered at PAX in future posts, so I will not go into detail here. For now I will say, it was one of the most fun times I have had in a very long time, and I will be making every effort to return again next year. But I want to talk about PAX in this post because it was the catalyst for some blending of two worlds for me - two worlds that I have made an effort to keep separate.

The truth is, in many ways there are two "me's." And I don't mean that in a schizophrenia way. I just mean that there are two sides of me, and I generally don't blend the two often. One side of me is the geek part, or at least the geekier part. This is the part that generally stays on the Net or in games, or with a fairly small group of people I know in real life. Then there is the me that is not as geeky. I was going to use the term normal here, but that is disingenuous, as it implies that being a geek is not normal. This other side of me does not talk about games or geek culture much, goes to work, tries to talk about other things with friends.

In many ways, both sides are a lie, because neither side is complete. There are people in my less-geeky side that have no idea about my interests in many types of games, or TV shows, or movies. There are people in my geeky side that don't know about some of my sports or news/politics interests. This blog is a step I am taking to try to rectify that situation.

Which brings me to the goals of this blog. I am hoping that this first post will also be the last post where I do so much self-analysis. I intend to do a different kind of analysis moving forward from here. This blog will cover a wide range of topics, that deal with both sides of my interest, with a bit more on the geek side of things. I hope to do some reporting on different events, bringing together different articles I have read, maybe filling in the gaps that I see in a story or issue. There will be some opinion-oriented posts, in the form of thoughts I have on whatever games I am playing, or thoughts on issues like privacy, consumers, and some politics. I promise that I will make every effort to make clear distinctions between my opinions and my reporting, for lack of a better term.

I hope that whoever reads this will feel free to make comments on what I write, on how I am covering something, or your response to my opinions. I promise I will read them, and hopefully they will help me grow and evolve as a blogger.

With all that said, let's get this journey started.

-Nova