About Me

There's a lot that people can want from an "about me" page, so in the usual fashion I've tried to address everything, and hopefully not made too much of a spaghetti out of it.  Here goes…

If you want to contact me, the best way is by email, at [mynickname]@[mynickname].com.  Please forgive me if I don't answer your email right away, but I do answer all of my email eventually, and I will get to yours as soon as I can. I'm also on Twitter as puredoxyk, and my private-r, mostly friends-only journal for fiction and complaining is on livejournal (http://pure-doxyk.livejournal.com).  Presumably you see the pattern there. 

The nickname, by the way, is just a bunch of letters I happened to decide I liked years ago — possibly because I have a logical obsession with paradoxes, and am continually zonked at how many of them I find in my own head.  Puredoxyk is one of about five pseudonyms I like to write under; which is inconvenient I know, but people who love words tend to get addicted to names too.  To keep things at least somewhat neat, I do all the polyphasic stuff under Puredoxyk.  My "real" name is Marie, and I'll happily answer to either.

If you're seeking a list of Reasons I Might Say Something That Interests You, perhaps this will suffice:

• I have a philosophy degree, though like all good philosophers, I don't think it counts for much
• I'm a student of traditional Chinese kungfu and taiji; I've been studying taiji and kungfu, with a focus on internal arts and meditation, for about seven years.  I had to leave the Shaolin Temple and my studies there in 2010 (I miss it; it was a slice of heaven on earth, no lie), but I picked up a brilliant Chen-style teacher and am totally in love with that too. 
• I've been a polyphasic sleeper since June 2006 (Everyman, though with lots of experimentation of other schedules too).  I was one of the first people to successfully adopt the Uberman Sleep Schedule in 2000 (its name is also my fault ;).
• I spent a few years doing Foreclosure Prevention counseling in Michigan, before moving to Boston to escape the economic crapgasm; and I lived in or near Detroit for most of my life.  I have…strong views on some of the economic happenings in the U.S. recently, admittedly.
• I've gone a whole winter without shoes, and would do it again.
• I've worked in technology for almost two decades, and have done a lot of research on copyright / IP issues, as well as consumer law and technological innovation.
• I believe in uncompromising loyalty to the truth of who you are, and I believe that this truth, if you know it, will actually set you free.

Or perhaps you wanted Odd Other Facts For Your Amusement:

• Sometimes I scream back at the television, radio, or sky.  I think playing a passive role is largely a choice:  Even if the other side's not listening, you can still remind yourself that part of your place is to speak.  
• Similarly, you can love things and people from your own heart and for your own fulfillment, without needing them to give anything back — love itself has its own rewards.  I try to love because I want to experience it, not because I want something in return.
• I love, with a world-breaking degree of passion, words and the energy they're capable of gathering and holding.  I consider brilliant writer/poet/singer/screamers minor deities for channeling this sacred thing, and I think bland or stupid copy (advertisements, most television and fluff journalism) should be excised from any good experience of life. 
• I cannot tolerate uncomfortable clothes or hairstyles, not for even a minute — but I can kneel on a bare floor and meditate until my legs fall asleep.  (Go figure.)
• I make chainmail jewelry when I need something meaningless to do (it's meaningless because I don't wear jewelry; but I enjoy making it anyway, especially the chains).
• I'm not a half-bad singer/screamer myself, though I've been painfully shy about it most of my life.  Recently I've gotten a little less shy, though.  Look out world!
• I take "memento mori" very seriously — I think daily about how I could croak at any moment, and that what determines how good my life is is how full my experience of *right now* is.
• I have a history of clinical depression since childhood, but have successfully treated it without medication for more than a decade now.  (Note that I didn't say it's "untreated" — just treated without pills.)  I also have mentally-ill family members and friends, and family-members and friends who are in the psychology field.  (Our dinner conversations are epic.)  And I really really hate discriminations against the mentally ill.  And the poor.  (And I hate that we use the same word for being economically disadvantaged, and for being badly made.)
• I love to homebrew, handroll, make from scratch and invent things.  I'm not an engineer, but I love, love, love working with them.
• I grew up Catholic.  I feel that staying Catholic as a woman would have been more than a little like staying in the KKK as an African-American.
• I am absolutely useless at two things: Playing stringed instruments, and sewing.  My math skills also leave a lot to be desired, though I'm pretty good at theory, and I find it really interesting.

Of course, if you're looking for Some Philosophically Honest and Weird Attempt to Actually Define myself, I can accommodate that too!  Voila, an essay:

What I am I'm part mortal, but I don't know which parts exactly. I seem to have a shard of some type of godhood lodged in my body, that tells me beautiful but unprovable things all the time, though sometimes it's really hard to hear. This is because I also have a complex computer running at all times in my head, the output of which can be amazingly noisy. Sometimes I get so caught up in dealing with that damn machine's chemicals and calculations, that I totally forget where I am and what I'm doing. All of my parts seem to be housed imperfectly (lots of leaks) in a rather sloppily-constructed but ingeniously designed robot-automaton thing, the maintenance of which can be hell on wheels, but to compensate, it can have orgasms.  I am unable to determine at this time if I am essentially finite or infinite, but strangely, I seem to be able to be okay with either option.  (Is that an argument that I must be infinite?)

And lastly, for those who require visual confirmation that I'm neither male, nor hyperdimensional, nor visibly alien, here you go:

(That's a (not terribly flattering) picture of me pausing for a (fake) nap at Buckminster Fuller's grave, in Mount Auburn cemetary in Boston.  Bucky Fuller is the first long-term polyphaser On Actual Record, if you didn't know; and also Mount Auburn is one of the most beautiful places ever — if you're in the area, go see it!)

(Also, I realize the picture doesn't prove I'm not hyperdimensional, but after some consideration I've decided that some things it's okay to leave to faith.  ;)