Blog #1: Every Journey Has A First Thought

Hello all, welcome to the first blog. I am your mostly humble writer, Oli aka Old Owl, and I am here today to introduce myself and this segment. While the word ‘geek’ has never been one I have overly identified with, predominately because of its mainstream appropriation, I cannot escape the fact that pretty much all my life I have been into geeky things. Reading, sci-fi, fantasy and computer games have all been stapled sensory diets throughout my life. Perhaps the height of my geekish tendencies is my writing; from fantasy worlds to poetry, I love putting pen to paper. And that my friends, is how I have landed here. In my head, and I assume yours too, there are millions of ideas and opinions bustling to explode out. With social media being the obvious output, but me not willing to risk the potential road rage one differing opinion can cause, I thought I needed a new platform for my geeky thoughts. So, with the added benefit I get to improve my writing skills, here we are superSCOPE, Blog #1.

With most articles I typically aim to focus on themes relating to one of the many great franchises in all of Geekdom. But occasionally, like today, I will be dropping a blog. In these, I’ll throw a personal anecdote at you that is related to some manner of geekiness. This is with the hope that some readers may relate. So, to complete the introduction, let me give you a rundown of my geek indoctrination.

I grew up a bit of a sporty lad on a working-class estate where pretty much all my friends were of the scally (presently known as chavs) persuasion. Now, being a geek wasn’t cool in the nineties and the things you enjoyed doing really could affect your social status. And while this is something I care less about now, it subconsciously mattered as a youngster. But, while I was certainly ‘one of the boys’, I had a hidden influential geekish gem up my sleeve, my family. My Dad, Big G, a sporty guy himself, indulged in a bit of high fantasy reading on an evening, and while this certainly influenced me, it was my older brother, who we’ll call Minor who enabled much of my geekiness to flourish (at home).

Minor, a school ‘inbetweener’ had friends on both sides of the line; scally estate mates and nerdy Warhammer pals. These pals of his exposed me to geek level enjoyment and some of my earliest passions, namely Star Wars and video games. I must say, that on the face of a lot of my interests, they are not always overtly geeky. But, a true geek knows it is not really about liking something specific, it is about the depth you go to learn about and increase your knowledge of that thing. So, while I was influenced massively by my friends, I feel I was very lucky to come home to a brother that kept me anchored and interested in things at a geek level.

While this is only a footnote of sorts, I feel it a note worth adding. By my teens I had a fair amount of troublesome friends, who would not be seen chatting Star Wars philosophies in a million years. Yet, with me, they would. Now, I do not want to get stuck into the ridiculousness of social respect dynamics between working-class scallys but, there was one fact that made any initial interactions with chavs different to how some would have interacted with other geeks. As a teenager I boxed. Boxing alone gave me a point of contact that would interest scallys at the same time as laying down some manner of unspoken social status. Yes, as a teen, things are silly. I mention this as some manner of advice. Not to encourage you to ‘get hard’ or partake in something you do not want to do but, to find a point of mutual interest between you and those people you may typically not want to interact with. Or, preferably, don’t interact haha.

So, with that ramble over, hello again, I am Oli and this is the end of my first ever blog post. My hope with everything that I put out is that it may give you some inspiration to discuss the concepts I bring up. Additionally, perhaps more specifically with these personal blogs, I would like to know if you relate to any of these experiences or opinions. Even better, I would like to hear if you disagree with any opinions. So, for now, all the best. May the prosper be with you.

Old Owl