I’m going to do something I should totally never do on a used-to-be-professional, still-is-public blog. I’m going to play with a meme. A thirty day meme, even. After the dust and quiet has fallen so comfortably here, this is tantamount to sacrilege – but it sounds fun, so here we go!

Day 1 is an introduction.

Hi. I’m Ty. This name, “Ty,” is the color of old forest lions, grey-tawny, and maybe that’s why it fits so well with Barbary. Ty is soft and worn, a favorite throw-blanket, a well-loved couch. Ty is sand almost-but-not-quite touched by the licking, lapping waves of the sea. Ty is the texture of coarse stone. Ty is above-ground roots with skin like bark, huge oaks in warm light. Ty is the fur over cat or dog toes, the rough pads beneath.

I live with five cats, two dogs, and my partner J. I wear two earrings in one ear, have a curly brown mohawk, and most of my face is scarred. I look pretty badass in mirrored sunglasses and the right jacket. I make really exaggerated expressions a lot and have a really malleable voice to match. I sing whenever I can.

I don’t use many pronouns in reference to myself, or I’ll default to ‘it’, which I don’t find offensive or belittling. I’m happiest when people aren’t quite sure of my gender. I get violently offended when someone stereotypes me. Gender in all its permutations absolutely fascinates me.

I am constantly analyzing everything I observe. Not in a judgmental way, but in a curious ooh-wot’s-its-guts-look-like? way. I want to know how and why things work, and by things, I usually mean people. Living things and thinking minds are incredibly intriguing to me. And everything I observe and learn, I try to relate to me and my experiences to better understand it all.

I like writing and living viscerally. I want to exist and convey my existence richly and authentically, in a way that people can chew and digest and integrate into how they live and project themselves. Communication is important to me – accurate communication, genuine communication. It’s really hard for me to lie – ethically, anyways, I can be very believable when necessary – and I consider inaccurate perceptions to be unintentional lies.

I talk to everything, whether or not it talks back. I tell my car good morning and thank her when I park. I hide in a giant tree when I need to calm down, even though I can’t climb any other tree and much prefer rock-scrambling. I’m really good at changing traffic lights when I need to. I have a small brown dragon who usually stays on my shoulder and has a fondness for raw fish.

I spin wild stories and totally mundane stories, but the line is a little blurry unless you know me really well.

Sometimes, details matter immensely – like what one does or does not capitalize, like which shades of which colors are used – and sometimes, nothing but this huge abstract vague impression-image matters. Sometimes it’s all math, and sometimes it’s all ideas.

I am animal-centric. The natural world matters a zillion times more to me than the constructed human world of media and society and history and politics. (The inner workings of the human animal counts as part of the natural world, for me.) I adore languages and science and math, these things that help me understand how the world and its denizens work. I express my delight in this world by creating fictional worlds so I can highlight in stories all the awesome things I find.

I know myself very well, I take good care of myself, and I’m honest with myself and usually pretty gentle. I really wish that sentence didn’t set me apart from as many people as it does. I keep trying to improve, because change is my life and to stop moving is to stagnate and die.

I have a hard time making myself do something if I really don’t want to. Emotions are my fuel, logic the facilitator to their healthy expression. I follow my heart.

I hate judgment, rudeness, malice, bigotry. I fight these things in my own self whenever they crop up.

Sometimes, the world is so huge that it terrifies me, and I hole myself away until my courage returns. And sometimes, I can scale any mountain and roar my triumph from the peak. I’m a dynamic paradox.

I’m a person, no more or less complex than anyone else.

Nice to meet you.