Who am I. Who am I.

Well, I can tell you that my name is Steve. Some people will say that “Steve” is not my real name because it’s actually my middle name. It’s not even my middle name, but a nickname. A short form of “Stephen”. This alone confuses me quite a bit. Try typing “stephenlove.org/who-r-u/” in your browser and see what happens. I’ll wait.

Yep, still here.

Anyway, we were talking about my “real” name. “Steve” is the name that I’m called, so the idea that it’s somehow less real just because it’s my middle name is not one to which I subscribe. That said, it makes filling out forms, especially the legal variety, take a little extra thought because I have to determine whether they really need my first name, or if the name that I actually use will suffice. Recently I’ve considered legally dropping my first name altogether. Because who needs a first and middle name besides misbehaving children or famous assassins?

For now, I still have the first and middle name I was given at my birth in New Orleans, Louisiana. I’ve also lived (in chronological order) in Rhode Island; Houston, Texas; Ventura, California; Houston, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Fairfield, Connecticut; and Houston, Texas. All before graduating high school. Which was actually in Sugar Land, Texas, but that’s really not important. I haven’t gone to any of the reunions. I still talk to the people with whom I really care to stay in touch. (If you went to high school with me and we don’t still talk, ignore the previous sentence, which was just to boost the self-esteem of those other people. I’d love to catch up.)

I stumbled around community college for a couple years in computer science courses, until I finally transfered to the University of Houston and settled on creative writing as my major. Couldn’t have been happier with that. There’s nothing better than geeking out on books with other book snobs. I also participated in a two-week creative writing workshop in St. Petersburg, Russia with Summer Literature Seminars in 2001. I actually spent an entire month in Russia that summer, after completing the University of Houston’s accelerated Russian course. Four semesters of language instruction crammed into one. Intense and crazy, but so worth it. I wish I’d kept it up.

Computers remained a personal hobby of mine after switching majors. I learned HTML a little late in the game (1998) and started tinkering with Flash 4 the following spring. Some freelance work came my way through family and friends, and I began sneaking PHP 3 (had to wait for my web host to upgrade to PHP 4) into projects. I discovered Blogger in 2001 and intended to use it as a platform for writing short stories, but it never panned out.

After college, I found work as a reporter for a weekly community newspaper despite having never taken a journalism course. (For anyone intersted in writing newspaper articles (or even blog articles) I highly recommend Newsthinking.) Writing for a newspaper was more fun than I ever thought it would be. And then my boss, the editor, was forced to resign after he was caught blogging about work. The publisher asked me to take the job, and I accepted. Though I enjoyed editing, something about the job killed little pieces of my heart on a daily basis until the only happy part of the day was the hour-and-a-half commute via public transportation (two buses and light rail) where I escaped in the pages of a book.

So I did what anyone in my position would have done. I quit and moved to California with hopes of finding some sort of job as a writer. I found roommates over the Internet and moved to Costa Mesa, near Newport Beach. My dream of finding a writing job resulted in finding a dream job (at that time) as a web developer for a video game company in Irvine (no, not that video game company). Yes, it was as fun as it sounds.

There I stayed for a couple years until deciding to uproot myself in the fall of 2008 and move closer to family in Colorado. I had the good fortune of finding another video game company in Boulder, and am quite content.

In my spare time, I try to find time to work on personal projects and goals, which includes reading every book on the Norwegian Book Club’s Library of World Literature list. I’m about halfway done.

I also write on this website, usually about web development, but sometimes I can find other things to say.