I dunno, lots of things. I enjoy reading, writing, science fiction, and fantasy. I'm a techy geek. I got my ham license when I was 9 years old (and was the youngest in Canada to be licensed at the time). I'm a Christian (though so many people say that, to mean so many different things, it doesn't actually tell you much about what I believe). I've voted NDP in every Canadian election since I was old enough to vote (sadly, that also doesn't tell you as much about what I believe as I wish it did). I was born blind. I spend hours on Reddit. I'm single and not really looking. I'm an only child. I went to university for journalism. I don't use anything I learned in university, ever, and am instead involved with a Bitcoin startup. I hate programming, but I love the results that come from being able to program/script things that fit my needs, so I do it anyway. I'm terrified of hospitals, to the point that I can't even visit my sick loved ones, because the sick person I'm visiting winds up having to calm me down, instead of me being any comfort to them. I'm a straight white male.

Do any of those things "define" me? I'm sure a particular type of activist would say I'm a Christian straight white male, and that's all that can ever matter about me. Others would say being born blind is what "defines" me, even if I don't like it. I guess the answer is that I don't think that's really a reasonable question; is anyone really defined by just one thing?

I guess I let my strength define me, after keeping a level head and doing my best to except the sudden loss of my vision and subsequent absolute redefinition of my life path. I was always hyper visual, a major movie buff, studied animation and was in the industry for 12 years. Working in animation and visual effects never felt like a job; I loved every single day that I got to go into the office and work on creative projects and bringing stories and characters to life. I loved art, people watching, I would always walk around cutting together my experiences in my head like a movie, figuring out camera angles, and I have a photographic and eidetic memory. I love to cook and bake, I love boardgames and would hold dinner and game nights with all of my friends. After finding and figuring out how to make games accessible, thankfully I am able to do that again.

I would constantly be playing video games, both by myself and with my friends on my PS3 or through my steam account. I play the piano and used to make electronic music using midi and reason. I am a gun owner and would love to go to the range, plinking at paper targets or metal plates when shooting outdoors. I'm a Democrat, liberal socialist, atheist, and have lived in the bay area all of my life, currently in San Francisco. Currently in an open relationship with a wonderful girl who doesn't care about me being blind and has worked hard to help me get comfortable with what we can do together and figuring out how to do things that I used to enjoy doing with vision, helping push me out of my comfort zone and expanding the limitations I put on myself because of the blindness and stopping me from perceiving myself as being a burden to those around me.

Thankfully, the Lighthouse is here and they have helped me through my vision loss immensely, giving me a new career path and the training necessary to figure everything out. I do a lot of advocacy for accessibility, and I am currently the accessibility specialist at Lyft, currently working my way through the Deque university program to become an accessibility expert and self teaching myself Swift so I can do iOS development; my goal is to be able to fix the accessibility problems in applications rather than just pointing them out and complaining.

I define myself.

My ability to procrastinate.

My blindness defines me. It's the single most important aspect of my life and the focus of all my conversations; nothing can distract me from it, it's depressing.

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