I work for a company that makes software for businesses that take reservations - mostly B&Bs, Inns, RV Parks, etc. I work on the customer support team, where I specialize in helping our customers with their HTML needs and other misc. stuff - setting up new customers, making sure that their booking engine looks fabulous, and creating fancy emails for them is most of what I do.
Pets:
I have a kitten named Lulz who is 11 months old. (Born July 3, 2016)
Interests:
Hetalia - obviously Kitten Spoiling - she's so cute! Video Games - simulation/strategy D&D - and Critical Role Batman - note the necklace in the pic
About Me I was born and raised here in Utah. I'm Mormon and pretty religious. I'm the second of five - I have a big brother, two little brothers, and my sister is the baby of the family. My middle brother and sister are both married and live fairly close (and my brother has 3 little boys!), while I and my other two brothers live in an apartment in my parents' basement. (I've moved out before, but I didn't like my roommates and I realized that I love living with and around people who love me.) I have five different mental health disorders that I'm pretty open about - generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, panic disorder, and a non-specific mood disorder (which is pretty much the leftovers from depression, which I had during my teens) (listed roughly in order from most to least problematic) - but I've been in therapy for over 20 years so I have all of them 'in a good place'.
I'm a pretty chill person most of the time - I kind of taught myself to be that way because it helps me cope with my mental disorders - but that means I don't get upset very easily and when I do I calm right down. But usually I'm a pretty happy person, and I like to joke around though I have a very dry sense of humor that a lot of people don't get. I'm pretty stubborn and don't give up very easily, which is good because I've been through a lot of hard things in my life. But because I've been through a lot of stuff, I'm totally sympathetic and empathetic about people going through hard stuff. I've ended up making quite a few friends kind of based on that, actually - I end up befriending people who get judged harshly by others because I don't do that - I've been judged harshly myself a lot, so I know what it feels like.
Why do I roleplay? I discovered that roleplaying is a thing when I was 16 years old. That was a really hard time in my life - I'd been hurt by so many people so many times that I basically stopped even trying to trust anyone outside of maybe my family. But it's kind of lonely trying to live like that, so when I discovered roleplaying it became a good outlet for me because I could interact with people without worrying about it - if everything went horribly wrong I could delete my account, go somewhere else, and forget it all happened so it was 'safe'. At first I roleplayed on MUDs, MUCKS, etc. - if you don't know what that is, it's like a really, really old-school version of roleplaying in a very large chat group. Fortunately, over time I started learning how to trust people again so I didn't 'need' to roleplay as much as before, but by then I was totally sold on it as a fun thing to do. I actually think that being able to interact with people in such a safe environment helped me regain my confidence IRL, and I'm pretty fascinated by the psychology of it and how it might be able to help people who are deal with whatever they're dealing with. Also, it's fun!
Why do I admin? For me this is a more complicated answer than just 'because I know how to do it and I had an idea'. I think that a lot of people who run forums do so because they got an idea they were passionate about and knew people who could show them how to make it happen. I, on the other hand, purposely set out by myself to learn how to do all the things I needed to do (and this was back in the year 2001 or so when it was harder because they didn't have fancy things to help people who didn't know how to code).
Why? Because I got fed up with being on forums run by terrible admins. It was actually difficult to find one that wasn't run by someone who was a jerk, or who was nice but had friends who were jerks that they let do whatever they wanted, or who was simply not there and let anarchy take over. Of course, a part of the problem was that I was 18 at the time and interested in things that teenagers like so the admins were usually teenagers themselves and therefore tended to be irresponsible. But throughout my roleplaying career I've found it easier for me to make a forum than it is to find one that has a theme that I like and that is run by someone I think does a good job.
And when I do find a forum that I like run by someone someone else, I've found myself being dragged into being on the staff frequently. In fact, the last forum I ran was started by a friend, but then she lost interest and gave me the forum because she didn't want to run it anymore and knew that I'd take good care of it.
And I do believe that I'm a good admin - not because I think that I'm amazing, necessarily, but because of my mindset as an admin. I actually really don't enjoy running forums - it's a lot work and pressure. You have to make a lot of decisions, and some of them are really important and will ruin the forum if you make the wrong one, and regardless of what you decide someone will probably think that you made the wrong decision and say nasty things about it because this is the internet and that's what people do on the internet. But what I do enjoy is being a player on a forum that is run really well, so I'm willing to put up with all the hassles of being the admin so that I can be a player on my forum. And because of that, whenever I make a decision as an admin I try to ask myself what I as a player would want the admin to do in this situation and I do that. At that seems to work really, really well.
That said, I'm human and not perfect and I'm sorry that all of you have to put up with that. But one of the perks of being the admin is that if you think the admin is doing a terrible job you can actually do stuff to try to fix that.
Why I'm telling you all of this Well, it's partly because I'm a friendly, open person and who doesn't like to talk about themselves? But even more so it's because admins are inherently scary - I know this as a player. Especially if you don't know them very well yet - they have the power to take their forum away from you at any time, you have no idea what will make them mad, and if you like the forum and the people on it that's a terrible thing to have to worry about! So I want you guys to know who I am so that I'm less scary. And I also want you to know:
You can talk to me about anything without needing to worry about it - Especially in private, I am totally open to talking to you about anything you want, including anything not related to the forum if you want. And you can even say it however you want - if you're mad at me you can call even call me names and tell me how horrible I am. I've been around the block on the internet, so I can take pretty much anything you want to throw at me. In public it's a bit different, only because Rule #1 of Toia is respect and making something like that a public spectacle isn't very respectful of anyone involved. Though I will note that people in general, including myself, tend to be more likely to respond positively to what you're saying if you're nice.
I don't ban people for little things - And I consider someone calling me names when they're mad to be a little thing. Because it is, at least if they don't do it all day every day. People get upset, and I understand that. People aren't perfect and make mistakes, and I understand that. If you're in danger of being banned, you can expect to be warned first and along with that warning will come a detailed explanation of exactly what you're doing wrong and how I expect you to behave differently in the future. It won't be a 'Hey, cut that out!' in the chat, it will be a letter - or maybe a long chat discussion - in which I will directly tell you that being banned is on the table, because that's how I roll. But that's probably not going to happen as long as you're not purposely trying to harass, upset, or otherwise harm someone, and even if you do you'll get a 'don't do that again' first. And that's just not something that even comes up very often among mature adults.
You can ask me to explain myself - If I do something (especially as the admin but I'm pretty open so you can even ask about my life choices if you want, lol) and you don't understand why, feel free to ask me what I was thinking. I'd be happy to try to explain myself! Like I said above, I try to admin in the way that I as a player would want me to admin, and as a player I have never appreciated it when admins do things that I don't understand and then leave me to wonder what in the world they were thinking. So I'm not that kind of admin - ask away! And know that if you disagree with my reasoning and want to say so and tell me that I'm stupid, I won't get mad and ban you.
Last Edit: Jun 30, 2017 18:03:47 GMT -7 by Avalikia
