Writing is the thread that has been a part of my life, always. I've taken it for granted.

I really took a knack to writing when I was in grammar school. I wrote a book for a Scholastic Book Fair contest called What Year is This? Of course it involved time travel. The lead character went back in time, met her own mother, and then the space-time continuum went kablooey. Happens!

Later still in grammar school, I was the creator and writer of a series of magazines over a 3 year run. These were paper magazines, ones I put together by myself initially and later with a staff. My best friend Greg was on staff, and soon I had a good third of my class on staff with me. We published something like 200 issues, nearly every week.

I wrote for Loadstar 64 and Loadstar 128 - reviews of computer software. The young geek in me wanted to get published in COMPUTE!'s Gazette or Ahoy! or RUN . That never happened.

In high school and college, I wrote more things for myself. I wrote tons of poetry that, I trust, is not that great. I started journaling.

I journaled on my website, writing nearly every day for years, from 1999 until about 2001. I co-wrote The Daily Ping with my good friend Ryan for 13 years, starting in 2000 - something every other day. I wrote interactive web fiction "exhibits" for several years.

I continued to write on my website, just not in the same format. I blogged. I LiveJournaled for a short time. I used Vox. I kept trying to find the right way, the best way, to get my words out. You see it today in blogging, and tweeting, and, and, and....

That's irrelevant. The important thing is that I've been writing for almost all of my life, and I have been quick to assume it will always be there for me. Writing has been the skill I have used every day of my life, and it is the skill I will continue to use until I can no longer do it.

But it is a part of me. It's high time I say so.

I'm a writer.