When I was in junior high, a good friend started calling me Stan, which came from an inside joke. I adopted it as my online persona (“Stan” became “Stanman” became “StanManX”). When my friend introduced me to some of his friends, he introduced me as Stan. For about six years, those people thought Stan was my real name. As a result, I stopped thinking of it as my gamer handle and began to associate it with nebulous concepts like “belonging” and “friendship” and all of that. These people stood in my wedding.

One of those people got me my first “real” job. I started as an intern in 2006, full-time after I graduated and got married in 2007. He introduced me as Stan, naturally, and that became my nickname at work. It was great at first, but once I figured out that the boss was evil and his pet boy was a douchebag, I started to hate it. It was no longer “the name my friends call me,” but “the name my jerkwad boss and the drunk in the cube next to me call me.”

In May 2010, I attempted to create a new identity for myself. It made sense — I hated the sound of my nickname, and I wasn’t gaming a whole lot because I was desperately trying to figure out how to get out of my job. A friend encouraged me to reinvent myself and go nuts.

My new website — this website — would be the outlet for creativity, while the other one would be my personal blog. It sounded great! Instead of having a random mish-mash of different crap, I could have two mish-mashes of semi-focused crap! Brilliant!

It never really worked. I was pumped about the new site for a while, but the old one basically fell by the wayside. The main problem is that you honestly can’t separate “creative” from “personal”, so every time I had a thought, I agonized over which blog it belonged on. It wasn’t so bad when I was on a hot streak with the music, but, as any creative person will tell you, the well sometimes runs dry and needs a few weeks to refill. That’s when I basically gave up on trying to post anything.

In October 2010, a couple things happened. The friend who encouraged me to start this site proved not to be a friend after all. The friend who got me my awful job got me a much better one. I insisted that he not introduce me as Stan, because I didn’t want random douchebags calling me that, and he worked really hard to start calling me Matt while at work.

Funny thing about the new job, though, is that there are no douchebags. That’s probably not entirely true, statistically speaking, but in regards to people I have to interact with, they’re generally pretty great.

Another perk of the new job is that I am in a much better place mentally and emotionally. A direct result of that is that I’m more creative, more productive, and have more time for screwing around playing video games.

Last week, I was moved to a new department, which involves sharing space with four other newbie programmers. One of these developers is named Matt, which led to another saying that we needed some way to differentiate us. I mentioned that, when faced with a similar situation, my friends started calling me Stan. Immediately, they wrote “Stan” up on the whiteboard.

It’s kind of nice this time around.

At this point, I’m tired of having two dead websites and I miss having the pressure of a blogging schedule to keep me on top of my other creative projects. This whole “new identity” thing came about because I was in a dark place, so I’m killing it.

http://stanmanx.com

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1) I started writing a Final Fantasy VII fanfic to get my creative writing muscles warmed up again. It will never see the light of day, but I feel like I can handle words again. The lesson: Writing is like riding a bike; if you wait too long, the thing is covered with rust and you have to get a new bike, but you’ll still be able to ride. Wait, what?

2) GoDaikoCon – anime convention. Basically went because Eyeshine was playing three shows. They are awesome. We own four of their albums now and they are my favorite band. The lesson: There is none. They are just a sweet band.

3) I started practicing guitar in earnest. My friend Don wants to start learning, and he showed me a website that has stuff for people of all skill levels. SOON I WILL BE OF ALL SKILL LEVELS. The lesson: Lessons are always good!

4) I ordered an acoustic guitar. I should be here next week. I am so pumped. The lesson: Get Amazon Prime and your guitar would be here already.

5) I signed up for voice lessons. I start on the 6th. I am looking forward to recording some completely different music in the coming months. The lesson: See 3! (pee oh)

6) I am doing okay at learning to program. I haven’t been fired yet, so that’s a good start, I guess. The lesson: Programming isn’t hard so much as the people whose code you are looking at never learned how to comment properly, so you’ll be confused a lot at first. Hopefully it wears off?

7) Tonight I am debuting a new character in our DnD session: Robison of the Hood. The lesson: Classic literature is ripe for DnDfilement.

The entire Power Rangers franchise is now available on Netflix instant streaming. So… Sarah and I have been reliving our childhoods. Naturally in 2011, that involves a lot of, “What is so-and-so up to these days? To wikipedia!”

Yadda yadda yadda, it turns out Johnny Yong Bosch, aka The Second Black Ranger, fronts a band and I like them.

Also, he’s frikkin rad on Power Rangers. Just sayin.

I told myself “no synthesizers!”, which made it very hard not to fall back on synthesizers to get what I wanted. I love putting those kinds of arbitrary restraints on myself because they lead to much stronger pieces than when I can just throw random sounds in because I feel like it. I really like this one.

I read books. Regrettably, not nearly as many as I used to, but I do it. I also watch movies and play video games. Additionally, I write stories, record music, and draw (poorly). I have a healthy imagination.

There is a tactic for squashing discussion, which you likely encounter frequently if you read blogs or participate in online discussion. It follows the form, “You haven’t had this experience, therefore, you cannot possibly understand,” with an implied, “So you have no right to a voice in this conversation.” Mostly, I see it come up in the context of parenting — parents seem to love telling people to STFU if they don’t have kids, because apparently losing sleep for other reasons isn’t as good as losing sleep for crying babies.

The thing is, if you need to experience something to be able to understand it, then the only end to racism, sexism, homophobia, and the various other forms of discrimination that are rampant in our society is going to be to start arming people, because civil discussion will go nowhere.

But! Civil discussion is actually quite effective. People are patiently telling their stories with the hope that you will take a moment to really think about how you can make a positive change in the world. There are people who strongly disagree with the idea that you can’t possibly understand them because you aren’t them, and they want to help you to understand. Don’t belittle their efforts by shutting yourself down because you think you can’t understand. You can. You should. They would love it if you did.

We're Not Okay (buy!)

(Don’t ask how someone else’s blog post gets translated into music — just think of it as alchemy!)

The appeal is simply the ability to start new projects when I’m not at home. Ideas are constantly popping in and out of my head, and most of them end up lost to the ether because I don’t have a good way to capture them. A mobile music app solves that problem nicely.

So yeah, I’m blogging this because they’re giving away iPads and iPods and I want to win one.

Hall of the All-Father (buy!)

As far as deities from ancient mythologies go, Odin one of the coolest. To attain wisdom he does things like hang from a tree for nine days and pluck out an eye, and unlike that womanizing asshat Zeus, he’s interested in taking responsibility for the realm he rules.

Anyway, enjoy the music!