To begin with, Jackson is not my real name. It is nowhere close. I like my privacy and I like the privacy of those who appear in my blog, so their names and some details will be changed. One thing that's important is that I'm currently in the process of changing my name, from Jacqueline to Jackson, because I never liked the name Jacqueline (which I actually do, but it's not my real name anyway, so) and feel that Jackson better expresses my gender. Which is butch and genderqueer.
I work at my school's computer desk, helping people out with their computer problems, from mildly to moderately complex (anything beyond that goes to the full time tech staff). I really enjoy it, oddly enough, and if I have a good story I'll share it with y'all. I also play World of Warcraft--Horde only--and my current project is a level 76 orc marksmanship hunter named Boreal, so I may expound upon him in the future. I'm also a DJ, and I'm having fun playing with the DJ software on my MacBook Pro. I'm a total and complete Mac snob.
I hate spiders. My girlfriend kills them for me. Yes, I'm a butch. I have short hair and I wear men's clothing (and isn't that so stupid, that a whole style and type of clothing can get completely reserved for one gender only!), much to my mother's chagrin and girlfriend's delight. I sometimes feel like I'm more than half a boy, but I flap my arms a lot when I get excited and I'm one of the world's biggest shoe whores. And you know what? I spend way too much time justifying both/either my masculinity or femininity to people, so I'll stop there. For now. Because I'm having a shameless, dirty, delicious love affair with queer theory right now, I can't really keep from talking about gay stuff for long. All of that will be posted under "Teh gay."
I'm an athlete. I've played field hockey and lacrosse since I was 11. I recently quit lacrosse for rugby for reasons we won’t get into yet, and let me tell you, it is a very difficult experience to be playing a sport I don’t know inside out and backwards. I may not be a great player, but I make it my job to learn the minutiae of the field. Thankfully, my school isn’t very good at sports (with the exception of badminton and rugby), so they let me play on their teams. Of course, most of the people at my college were picked last for gym class all their lives, and they are all too pleased to never have anything to do with athletics ever again, so as alumns they never donate. So sports at my college are kind of a labor of love.
I’m a libertarian. Wait a minute, gays can’t be in the least sense right wing! And yet, here I am. As you may have figured out already, I’m a walking contradiction. See also: athlete, computer geek, violist.
And I’m a writer. And English major. I hope to be a publisher someday, and put queer (fantasy) fiction in the mainstream. Like Philip Pullman, I’d like to be a realist writer, but no matter how hard I try a demon or a dragon or a vampire-werewolf hybrid (not as lame as it sounds, I promise) always pops up. I love Philip Pullman, Robin McKinley, George R. R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkein, Pamela Dean, Lev Grossman, and anything about walking through a door, a wall, or a wardrobe into another world. I do have a crippling case of writer’s block that has felt like my arm’s been off for over a year. Which brings me to…
Early in the second semester of my freshman year, I was diagnosed with acute clinical depression. It nearly claimed my life several times. It’s in remission right now—I think of depression as like cancer, in that it doesn’t always completely go away but goes into remission. I’ve had a few flare-ups, but thanks to my loving, caring, beautiful, wonderful girlfriend, as well as my therapist, I’ve never gone back so far into the darkness. But that doesn’t mean I don’t remember, and I will talk about that here too. Mental illness is unfairly stigmatized and it’s important to bring its suffering out into the open and show people that it’s real, it’s serious, and it’s not just “all in your head.” It claims lives. It ruins them. Its sufferers need support and care and love, not injunctions to “get over it.”
Other than that, I will try to post at least once a week, on Fridays. I will talk about gender and sexuality, World of Warcraft, mental illness, procrastination, fantasy (and realist) literature, DJ software and sick tracks, college athletics and college politics, and the trials and tribulations of being an English major.
Ready?
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