This is gonna be a general discussion, reflection and talking about my own history, youth and the like. It's unlikely to talk about anything notably philosophical, and there will probably be large gaps in the timeline I write for things I either choose actively not to talk about, or don't remember. To set the scene, my current age is 19, so I can reflect on this as well 5, 10, 20 years in the future and have faint memories of my past. If you don't find this sort of thing interesting, then oh well.
I was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne, the place I've lived for most of my life in 1999. I was unfortunately born profoundly deaf, a topic that I will talk about much more later on as it becomes much more relevant. This wasn't known upon my birth, and it actually took(according to my parents) 3-4 years before this was found out by an insistent Doctor. The way this was known, was because my own knowledge of English language didn't mirror anyone else's in Nursery classes. I am deeply thankful to this Doctor for his insistence, and for my parents here, because without this I probably would have lagged much further behind in my own understanding of English and left much more significant issues for my adulthood. You can still hear these issues in my pronunciation and speech, but not in my text- notable through my lisp, unusually fast rate of talking at times, and the ability to slur words. You can hear me attempting to avoid these issues as well as possible in my video here, and you can hear me accepting the issues anyway here. I did have a speech and language therapist when I was younger to attempt to correct these issues in my youth, but my lack of understanding language, pronunciation and even caring about this when I was younger marks this for why these issues persist.
Carrying on, I passed Nursery School, and on the year it ended I believe, I went to Legoland with my Father. I had a significant interest in Lego when I was younger, and this was punctuated with an interest in Star Wars which would set my interests in conflict, sci-fi and engineering. I then went into Primary School, the first few years were a bit of blur, up to about Years 4 to 6(Age=8-10-ish). I sucked at the English Language understandably, but I excelled in Mathematics, and we had very very few other lessons. I do recall a few lessons on Computers and typing on Qwerty keyboards. In year 4 I believe I witnessed the Xbox 360 and playing Halo 3 at my Uncle's house, which led to me getting an Xbox 360 and Halo 3 later on that year. Before then I had used a PS2 and Gameboy to play games. I was a very enthusiastic gamer, and still have many of the discs and games I played along with the consoles I played on. I remember this time, pretty well because my emotional maturity wasn't there yet, and I was still relatively timid. I felt alienated and was actually excluded from a lot of activities by "friends" during this time, and while it sucked a lot of joy and made those years a lot more unhappy; it taught me very important, though very unconscious lessons about emotions, relations and the nature of friendships. I would say I only had 2 "real" friends during those years, Adam and Ben; but even they excluded me at times, understandably so. Before Year 3, I also had a crush on a girl called Hannah which people were
I met another friend in my neighbourhood, one who I'm still friends with to this day though we don't talk very often because our platforms and interests have made us a bit more distant nowadays. During those years we played the living hell out of Call of Duty Black Ops, and were huge Halo and Star Wars Battlefront fanatics. Year 6 had a notable event, when I changed from using hearing aids to having 1 hearing aid in my right ear, and a cochlear implant in my left ear. I still remember the operation very very well. It was about 2 weeks before my birthday in December, I had the surgery done with anesthetic but it being injected into left hand left it weak for the few days that passed and also probably began my later fear of Needles. To this current day I still find Needles uncomfortable to see used but I am no longer against their use on me in Medicine. The reason it was painful, was likely because it was a potent Anesthetic, and likely because the Needle used was very powerful. The following days from the surgery, I had a bowl-cardboard cup on my head, bandaged to it, while it healed. The scar it left was something I would try to cover up by growing long hair, but also because I didn't want people staring at my implant and asking many questions(I still got and get questions anyway despite this). So a cochlear implant replaces the function of a Cochlear in the ear, with an external processor connected to the internals through a magnet. This means I have a bump on my skull where the magnet is. Another thing towards the end of Year 6 before I left for Secondary School, I met a friend called Jackson in Call of Duty Black Ops matchmaking. We're still friends to this day but don't talk as much as we used to unfortunately.
After Year 6 in the British Schooling System, I went to a public secondary school that had about 1000 students summed through the different years(I think?). It was a very strict and very polite catholic school, which is where I got my mannerisms for public politeness around strangers, and people of authority, at least in person. In Year 7, I met a very good friend of mine through Minecraft on the now defunct Airthanox Survival Server: Xor(though he was called Arnoband at the time). Over the years, he has been a man I can personally say has solid integrity, and truly wish him the greatest in life as he deserves it. It was also in this year I went on a server called MineZ and met a really awful influence of a person called Cpt_Vulture. His influence didn't lead me to anything bad like drugs or alcohol, but he led me to become generally more unpleasant as a person. I would later realize this and cut him out of my life, but he remained in my life for a good several years. Sometimes he was alright to play with, sometimes he wasn't. The most remarkable thing I can say about him, is that his way of acting was leech-like, and demanding. In short, I have nothing good to say about him. I would also meet a friend called Nasser through MineZ. He was a very good friend who taught me a lot in the way of alternative viewpoints. Throughout Years 7 through to Year 10 I would not make ANY friends within the school I went to. I held a very strict personal stance to distance myself coming from my Primary School experience, which I am glad for as a lot of the actions I saw from a lot of the groups that formed were generally despicable. I did hang around some of the groups occasionally, but not in any "I want to be friends" manner. I was also generally seen as a verbal punching bag from a lot of them, which because I was a well behaved kid I did nothing about(also in part because I knew that acting against it would have little influence). So personally, I'd say the school system failed me for a lot of my years. I continued to excell in Mathematics, in Year 10 I took Computer Science as it was an available class and had influence from my Father and from a love of Games and have continued at it as it agrees heavily with my interests. I also got much better at English(I'd say my skills in English accelerated even, as I wrote essays sometimes in free time, and read a fair bit of fiction). It's still noteworthy that by this point, I would still say I was devoid of any influential personality, mostly due to my timid nature. I played Minecraft and CS:GO almost exclusively during this time, taking CS:GO to a DMG Rank. In Minecraft I mainly did building with my good friend Xor, though I didn't take it as seriously as he did, and tried to automate a lot of parts of it to systems like World Machine or World Painter.
Some time in Year 9-10 I gave up on using my right hearing aid as it didn't benefit me at all. It's also worthwhile noting I was skilled in lip-reading, though this skill deterioated with my growing dependency on hearing aids. Some might ask if I ever learnt sign language, and I didn't, as I had no deaf people to communicate with. In some ways, I'm pretty glad I didn't have any deaf people to communicate with in that way as it could have led me to becoming generally elitist about my disability.
My time in GCSE Year 10-11 Programming was relatively smooth. Being a beginner I obviously broke a lot of rules with abuse of globals and misunderstanding of OOP, but it was FUN. It wasn't like a teacher teaching me, it was like a computer telling me I was doing it wrong. It was my errors mirrored, and only my errors and no inefficiency of Human Communication. The only text I've ever read that mirrors my attitude here would have to be the Hacker Manifesto. I would later use Gamemaker Studio and participate in my first Ludum Dare game Jam. I think it was LD 34 or LD 33. I had no experience at all and made a (shitty) game in 3 days with no sleep or anything. It was awesome. I saw everything I want to do unravel before me with it, and the path was obvious. Software Development(games are software too alright).
To be continued in part 2. Part 2 will cover my time in 6th form, my development of interest in games development and software development and my time in the first clan I had ever truly been in, as well as bending and understanding my own morality experimentally. It's during this time I developed my personality, current-day mannerisms and principles.
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