I’ve always been a geek.
I’ve had glasses for as long as I can remember, and I wore braces in my 30s. I’ve always liked reading, sci fi, music, tech and all other things geeky.
My earliest geek memories are of “Star Trek,” the original series. Captain Kirk was probably my first real hero. After that I remember really being into Evel Knieval. In the early to mid 70s it seemed like Knieval was always jumping over something on a motorcycle or some other rocket powered device.
When “Star Wars” came out, I definitely moved to the Star Wars camp. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. I saw it right after it first came out in the theater, and then again at a drive in. My favorite film from the franchise has always been “Empire Strikes Back,” hands down, to this day. I was town between liking “Empire” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” at the same time though…it was a dilemma.
Soon after that I was a Dungeons and Dragons geek. I even won second place at a big tournament once with my team of friends. D&D was the only RPG I ever really got into, and I played through junior high, and a little into high school. I knew some guys who wanted me to play in college, but I’d moved beyond it at that point. I was WAY into it for a while though.
I was a comic geek for a while. When I was a kid I read a lot of my Dad’s old comics, a lot of war stuff like “Sgt. Rock.” From there I inherited stacks and stacks from a family friend—a lot of “Spider Man,” “Power Man and Ironfist,” and some classic horror comics. Then, one day I came home from school and my mother had thrown them all in the trash. She must have seen some of the horror comics!
I’ve also always been a video game geek.
For a while there, my Dad seemed to regularly set us up with the latest console. I remember the days of pong, and the variations of pong that were still basically…pong. Various Atari systems, Nintendo systems, and then over to the Sony Playstation. For years through my early “adult” life, all I’d play was “Madden” on the Playstation. Life caught up with me though. I still have a PS2, but our Wii is mostly used by the kids. My son is always playing “Lego Star Wars.”
I’ve been a music snob forever.
I’ve tended to get obsessed with bands and artists, consume them and then move on to something else. My first musical memory is seeing KISS on the Paul Lynde 1976 Halloween special. Big, loud, make-up and explosions. I was hooked on rock n roll.
In the 80s I was into a lot of New Wave music. Men At Work were probably my first real band that I followed. From there, MTV exposed me to other “video” bands like Duran Duran and David Bowie. My love for New Wave morphed into “alternative” with bands like The Smiths, Depeche Mode, New Order, The Cure, and the like. From there I got into punk, and some British heavy metal like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.
Most of what I still listen to today is music from the 80s. Still a lot of alternative and New Wave, but not a lot of new stuff that doesn’t sound like that old stuff. I’ve been in all kinds of bands from blues to punk to even a Duran Duran tribute band. I worked in two record stores where my music snobbery could run full course like in “High Fidelity,” and like when record stores still sold vinyl records.
I’ve always been a film geek too.
I remember watching movies back when I was a kid with my Mom. She’s a movie fan too. Seeing “Star Wars” changed my little movie going life. I didn’t want to like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” as it was competing with “The Empire Strikes Back” in the theater at the time. Indy and his homage to serial stories quickly won me over.
One of my first jobs was working in a video store, back in the days when “mom and pop” video stores were still all the rage. I spent a lot of time watching movies. Grew to love horror films, sc fi films, John Hughes films, and classic films of the 70’s like “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.”
With the rise of the Internet, I certainly became an Internet geek.
I ran one of the first online music e-zines, “The Pit” in the mid to late 90s. This was before the term “blog” even existed, but that’s what we were. From there I worked for an Internet startup, but didn’t get rich. Education To Gowas one of the first online education providers on the scene in the late 90s. Now they have been swallowed up byCengage Learning, one of the biggest education companies in the world.
I had a column in “Wwwiz Magazine” for a while that focused on music and the internet. I’ve written for numerous blogs on technology and the internet. I’ve seen more than one of my pieces plagiarized and stolen on the web—the mark of a true web writer.
I worked in the golf industry in online marketing when companies were just realizing the potential of the web to market to customers, and to sell to them online. When I started in Web marketing, ecommerce was a new idea. This was before social media, but I eventually went that direction, working with bands, and promoting shows online, then on Myspace, and over to Facebook, and other social media sites.
I had worked full time in online education for years and the then went pro and started doing social media for a living, working as a small business consultant, ramping up my social media skills on all the sites, and also for companies like Verizon.
I’ve never been that much of a pure tech geek—I always seem a bit behind the trends. It took me forever to get a smartphone, and now I still use an early gen Droid compared to what’s out there. I think my iPod is still first gen, as is my Kindle. I don’t own a tablet yet!
So what’s your geek evolution look like? Have you always been a geek? Where and when did you start?
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