Geekdom

The geek demigod that is Wil Wheaton has recently made an interesting post on his blog. Which got me thinking about my own self-identification as a geek.

I've always been different. No doubt about that. I may have been one of the popular kids in infant school but I soon grew out of that as I wanted to play games about mad scientists or superheroes and others just didn't. So I ended up with the ones who did - the ones who would play at Star Trek in the playground while other girls decided they were getting too old for make believe games. And yeah, sure, I stopped playing make believe for quite a while too, eventually. I got my kicks from books and TV instead.

I read SF and Terry Pratchett. I dabbled with Fighting Fantasy books and played with my brother's Advanced Heroquest more than he did. I wanted to be a physicist or an engineer or (finally) a mathematician when I got older. I soon decided I wasn't going to "grow up" - mathematicians never do, do they? And when I went to uni I was pretty convinced I was a geek and an outsider and so, being shy and stubborn, I didn't go out of my way to try and fit in. So I had a pretty lonely time really.

Until I might this guy. And he was a geek - a real one. A gamer who programmed and read real fantasy series and knew stuff - trivia and geeky stuff that I could never remember in a million years. (I think my brain just doesn't do well at retention of facts.) And so I got into Magic: the Gathering, and roleplaying, and pretty much discovered I loved it all.

And of course, now I was actually hanging out with geeks I discovered...how ungeeky I am. Or rather, how much a newbie I am. I've only been roleplaying five and a bit years now and haven't really played a lot of games in that time (the Terror gets in the way a bit). I don't code - I probably should learn something but I have great difficulty learning anything new as I don't have the patience and with programming something just doesn't seem to gel. I don't think the right way. (Must be because I'm a girl - ha!) And while I use Ubuntu I still have to look everything up whenever I need to do something. I don't really know how computers or operating systems or any of the programs actually work at all. There are tons and tons of films I just haven't seen - although Beloved and friends have been working on that. I've never played with numbers or shapes just to see how they fit together. I don't get the urge to take things apart to see how they work. And every area of geekiness I touch on, I just seem to fall short in some way. I'm a wannabe.

But you know what? I'm fine with that. So what if I'm the Eternal Newbie? At least I'm trying. I just feel guilty about calling myself a geek sometimes. But you guys don't mind, right?

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