I have been a fan of playing new games of all sorts from a young age, I have always wanted to learn and try new games and my curiosity for interesting an novel game mechanics has never left. This has extended to board games, video games, and table top role playing games. This has to be a hobby that I spend most of my time on between table top and video games and although I think that will slow down some this year its something I don't think I will ever stop doing.
It was Summer of 1992 that I first opened the Dungeons and Dragons "Red Box" (it was black at the time) starter set and learned how to play my first role playing game. Since then I have been hooked, and not just Dungeons and Dragons, I will take just about any system for a spin at least once with a willing group. I am also a collector of books, I have an ever expanding library of various systems, some I have divested over the years I am now trying to recollect and I am sure at some point I will need to get a bigger house just to hold all the books. Right now I spend most of my time playing Dungeon and Dragons 5th edition (5e) while I work on my next Big Eyes Small Mouth (BESM) campaign. There is also a weekly Rifts campaign and some other Palladium systems I am a player in and although I am not a fan of the company I still do love the games. Over the next year I hope to develop some of my own content in both 5e and BESM and see about ways to publish the content.
I can't really remember the first video game I played or when, but I have never stopped. And although I have slowed over the last decade in the number of game consoles I own, I have not stopped playing different games and using the systems I still own and hold on to. For the most part I am playing PC games, much of my time is spent playing Final Fantasy XIV as I would love to complete almost all the available content due to it being very rich in lore. I did pick up a PS5 and got a few of the newer Playstation only games like Grand Turismo, its been great for me to spend time riding my stationary bike and lap cars I could never own (or afford) in GT7. I know one game that will still get hours every month is Civilization, I cannot comprehend the thousands of hours over the decades I have spent in the various versions of the game, I am already over 2000 hours in Civilization 5 and need to spend more time in CIV 6.
I have had a long love for all things technical, my earliest memories include having some sort of electronic device in my hand to use. This grew to an early love of computers at about age 7 when I was using the Apple IIe at school, to my obsession with handheld devices with my Sega Game Gear, and on to digital photography as a way to hold on to my memories of traveling the world in my early 20's.
My first real taste of photography was working on my high school newspaper, my first year writing for the Freelancer we received a Sony Mavica digital camera using 3.5" floppy disks to store 0.3 megapixel pictures. I was an early fan of going out and using the camera and learning the best ways to utilize it. Since then I have always had a digital camera (or 9 as is the case now) and have been trying different methods of digital photography to see what holds my interest. I have not really gotten out there the last couple years but I have plans starting this year to really put the effort in and create more and push the limits of what I have done in the past. As with most things technology I am an early adopter of interesting technology, when the Micro 4/3 mount debuted I was sold. Big camera quality in an small and light package. Since I got my GH1 and then GF2 I have been collecting Micro 4/3 bodies and lenses, even some of the more interesting ideas like the Olympus Air A01 that does not have a screen and using your phone for screen and buttons.
Since those early school days on an Apple IIe, and later the LC II in middle school, I have been hooked on computers. The first family computer was an IBM PS/2 Model 70 with a 3.5 inch and 5.25 inch drive on them running Windows 3.11. I would play games like Civilization, Wolfenstein 3D, and the Carmen SanDiego series on the computer. It was also the first computer I wrote a school paper using Microsoft Word, it felt super cool to bring a 3.5 inch disk into school to print a report. Those early days also taught me a lot about troubleshooting computers and technology in general, my favorite being just rebooting things to see if it will fix it. Even with that early Windows experience my favorite computers where the Macintosh systems at school, the first computer I purchased with my own money was a Macintosh G3 tower and I have always owned a Mac computer since. Over the years thought I have tried lots of other computing devices, early Palm devices, Blackberry phones at work (which I used until 2016 when I got my first iPhone), early Atom mini laptops, and a variety of different new desktop technologies as I am an early adopter gluten for punishment. Although sometimes it does work out, my current home desktop is run by an AMD Ryzen 5800X3D which has been a gaming champion since day one.
I think this is an area I am going to be spending more time in starting this year, just being a creator. Writing more blogs and stories, creating more TTRPG content, more photography. I am finishing a(nother) masters degree in the next couple months and will need a mental break and rather than pour my life into a video game I will escape into all the fun projects I have been writing down over the last couple years.